Lagman gives up House Minority Leader position

Thursday, January 19, 2012

MANILA -- Albay Representative Edcel Lagman has resigned as Minority Leader of the House of Representatives Thursday to give way to the supposed “anointed one” of former President-turned-Pampanga congresswoman Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Lagman likewise resigned as chairman and member of Lakas-CMD and as Vice President of the Centrist Democrats International (CDI), a worldwide organization of Christian and Muslim Democratic parties, of which Lakas-CMD is a member. The senior lawmaker will remain an independent House member.

Lagman will explain his resignation next week, January 24, before the plenary.

Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez, who earlier claimed support from 21 members of the minority bloc, will replace Lagman. There are 29 members of the House minority bloc.

“My resignation would also put a stop to the creeping signature campaign of the GMA-backed Suarez camp which has inordinately demeaned opposition members who had been relentlessly pressured to abandon their support for me despite their having signed in December 2011 a resolution entitled “To Maintain Rep. Edcel C. Lagman as Minority Leader” bearing the signatures of an absolute majority of the minority members,” Lagman said in a press statement.

“I cannot continue serving a political aggrupation which deliberately refuses to recognize competent, militant and responsible leadership and would opt to follow blindly the importuning of former President Arroyo,” he added.

Lagman earlier accused Arroyo of planning his ouster after meeting with Suarez and several of her close allies in her hospital suite at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center two weeks ago.

Suarez, for his part, said he was only following a gentleman’s agreement made with Lagman even before the 15th Congress started. Lagman, however, argued that the term-sharing agreement only applied for the Speakership post. (Kathrina Alvarez/Sunnex)