Senator Robinhood Padilla on Sunday, July 28 clarified that there is no bad blood between him and Senate Majority Leader Francis Tolentino.
Last week, Padilla had asked Tolentino to step down as party vice president of the Partido ng Demokratikong Pilipino (PDP) of which he is now president. Both lawmakers are part of the PDP faction led by former president Rodrigo Duterte as the chairman.
“Alam nyo, magkaibigan kaming totoo. Pagka nagbasa kayo ng dyaryo, manood ng social media, pinag-aaway kaming dalawa. Huwag kayong maniwala doon. Dahil ako sasabihin ko sa inyo, kung may isang tunay na senador sa Senado yan ho ay si Sen. Tol Tolentino (You know, Sen. Tolentino and I are real friends. If you read the papers or social media, it seems both of us have bad blood. Don't believe that. I'm telling you now, if there is a real senator, it's Sen. Tolentino),” Padilla said.
"Hindi ako nangangampanya. Sinisigurado ko sa inyo magiging maganda ang kinabukasan ng Pilipinas kay Francis Tol Tolentino (I am not campaigning. I am telling you that the Philippines has a good future with Tolentino)," the senator added.
Following his call for his resignation, Tolentino merely shrugged off Padilla’s call and instead urged him to focus on helping victims of Typhoon Carina, which he said should be prioritized over politics.
Meanwhile, in an interview, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, who leads the original PDP-Laban faction, also expressed puzzlement at Padilla’s reason for his call for Tolentino to resign from his party position supposedly so the latter can focus on his new role in the Senate.
"Ano ngayon kung majority leader si Senator Tolentino, hindi ba part din ng majority si Senator Robin Padilla? So anong problema? Di ko nakukuha ang problema (So what if Senator Tolentino is the majority leader, isn't Senator Robin Padilla part of the majority? So what's the problem? I don't really get what his problem is),” Pimentel said.
But Pimentel said he couldn’t care less about their issues within their group, since in their eyes, “they are not part of our group.”
In the same breath, Padilla reiterated his full support for Tolentino and for the passage into law of a measure reviving the mandatory Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).
"Hangga't bingi ang Kongreso sa itinutulak ni Sen. Tolentino na mandatory ROTC training, laging malulungkot ang ating bansa sapagka't alam nyo ang ating kabataan sa Konstitusyon yan, malinaw, na dapat ang mga Pilipino handa sa anuman lalo sa pag-ibig di puro giyera (So long as Congress remains deaf to Tolentino's push for mandatory ROTC training, the country will be sad because the Constitution decrees that Filipinos must be ready for anything, in love and war)," he said in his speech at the opening of the Luzon Qualifying Leg of the ROTC Games 2024 in Cavite.