Palace says “no crack” among Duterte’s allies in the House despite rift

March 3, 2020

  Malacanang downplayed on Tuesday the rift involving some allies of President Rodrigo Duterte at the House of Representatives.

In a press briefing, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said that the President would not interfere with the "intramurals" in Congress.

"Even if they have intramurals there, if all of them are allies of the President, so there is no crack," he said when asked if the Palace thought that there is crack among the President's allies.

"There will be a crack if those fighting each other are saying that they are not for the President," added Panelo, who is also the chief presidential legal counsel.

Two members of the House of Representatives - Reps. Isidro Ungab of Davao City and Salvador Leachon of Oriental Mindoro - lost their committee chairmanships on Monday amid rumors of coup in the congressional leadership. The two are both administration allies.

They lost their chairmanships to other allies of the President.

Panelo said the Palace did not consider as "rift" the developments in the House.

"I don't think there is a rift...one congressman was being interviewed. He said the removal of one congressman to that post was more of an issue of loss of confidence, because he made certain alignments that the Speaker didn't know," he said.

Panelo also expressed belief that the issue in the House would not affect the legislative agenda of the government because "all of them support the agenda of the President or most of them anyway."

There were earlier reports of the move to oust Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano amid failure of the House to discuss yet the bills calling for the renewal of ABS-CBN franchise. Celerina Monte/DMS