Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte has slammed Deputy Speaker Cebu 5th district Rep. Vincent Franco "Duke" Frasco for supposedly sowing discord within the pro-Marcos majority coalition in the House of Representatives.
Villafuerte, the National Unity Party (NUP) president, said Frasco did this when he turned his back on the party's expression of support for the continued leadership of House Speaker Martin Romualdez in the 20h Congress.
“The members of the supermajority coalition, with Duke’s exception, are four-square behind Speaker Martin [Romualdez] to remain at the helm of the House of Representatives in the next Congress to help stay the course of President Marcos’ agenda of better lives for all Filipinos,” Villafuerte said in a statement Monday, June 9.
“So we actually do not know what discord he is talking about,” noted Villafuerte, outgoing congressman and governor-elect of Camarines Sur.
“Duke claims he had withdrawn his support for Speaker Martin supposedly because the quest for national unity on the Marcos presidency has been ‘undermined by political and personal interests,” Villafuerte said.
“This certainly is highfalutin language because if there is anyone guilty of sowing disunity and discord and advancing political and personal interests, it is Duke himself,” pointed out the Biclonano.
Villafuerte further claimed that Frasco "seems to be the one advancing his own selfish personal and partisan interests”, as he raised suspicion that the latter "has slighted the official NUP position of support for Congressman Martin as a shrewd political ploy to arm-twist the Speaker into keeping him as deputy speaker in the incoming Congress".
Frasco is one of only eight deputy speakers in the 300-plus strong chamber in the 19th Congress.
Frasco, son-in-law of defeated Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, was expelled from NUP over the weekend due to his "one-man decision" not to support Romualdez in the upcoming Congress.
Frasco claimed in a Facebook post Monday that he arrived at his decision after consulting with legislator-colleagues as well as his leaders and constituents in Cebu.
But Villafuerte didn't buy this.
"Such consultations could just be a figment of his imagination. And if indeed there were such consultations, as a true-blue NUP member, he should have first taken this matter up with the party leadership instead of going directly to the media without prior party discussions.”
Villafuerte said: "We acknowledge and respect the individual decision of the deputy speaker not to sign. That is well within his right. However, it is equally important not to conflate a singular position with the sentiment of the institution as a whole.
Romualdez is President Marcos' top lieutenant in the legislature.