PHILIPPINE NEWS SERVICE — WHILE the chairman of the House committee on ethics opposed any move to expel former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. from Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD), he believes that the ex-House leader should voluntarily leave out of delicadeza and for causing trouble to the members of the country’s ruling party.
“For delicadeza na lang ba, kasi dapat naramdaman na n’ya na halos wala nang naiwan sa kanya sa Lakas members sa House of Representatives,” said Romblon Rep. Eleandro Jesus Madrona, chairs of the committee and a stalwart of Lakas-CMD where De Venecia is the president emeritus.
Like Quezon City Rep. Matias Defensor, chairs of the House committee on justice, Madrona said it would be hard to expel De Venecia being the founder of Lakas-CMD.
“It’s so hard for us to kick him out because he was really one of the original people who organized Lakas in 1992,” said Madrona during the weekly Ayes and Nays Media Forum at Mongkok Restaurant in Quezon City.
But Madrona stressed that De Venecia’s statement that “everything is for sale” should make him decide where he should position now.
“Personally if you ask me, sana kung talagang feeling ni former Speaker De Venecia na ganoon na talaga, palaban s’ya, and napuna n’yo naman a lot of Lakas members of Congress really stood up against him, ’yung nag-react dun sa kanyang statement na kami daw eh for sale, so s’ya na lang siguro ang magkusa if ever,” said Madrona.
For his part, Defensor, a stalwart of Lakas-CMD, advised his party mates in Lakas-CMD to go slow with the expulsion of De Venecia.
“Isa sa founder ng Lakas (si De Venecia) and I think the Lakas members should very well go slow with him. Ang tingin ko si former Speaker De Venecia is merely expressing his own opinion and the party should not muscle him for that purpose or expel him only for that reason,” said Defensor.
Following his falling out with the Arroyo administration after his son and impeachment complainant Joey de Venecia III, losing bidder in the botched $329 million National Broadband Network (NBN) deal, implicated First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo in the NBN controversy, De Venecia was unseated as Speaker and replaced by Speaker Prospero “Boy” Nograles last February 2008.