Sudden might it seem but Sagip Rep. Rodante Marcoleta said his expulsion from six committees, including the justice panel that deliberates on impeachment complaints, came as no surprise.

Barely a week after he was stripped of his vice chairmanship in the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability, Marcoleta also lost his seat in the Committees on Public Accounts, Energy, Constitutional Amendments, Justice, and the powerful Commission on Appointments.

Marcoleta’s elimination from the said committee was announced on the last session of Congress on 25 September before it went on a month-long break.

“I think it was planned. I'm no longer shocked because if you look at it, they are really mining anything they can throw against the Vice President,” Marcoleta said in Filipino in a recent interview.

To recall, Marcoleta, along with three Duterte allies, including Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, took up the cudgels for the VP, who has been subject to rigorous scrutiny in the House over allegations of fund misuse of her office and the Department of Education during her tenure as secretary.

Marcoleta was also embroiled in a rhetorical duel against his peers, whom he accused of defying a "time-honored tradition” of extending courtesy to the Office of the Vice President by scrutinizing her annual budget.

The seasoned lawmaker schooled his “neophyte” colleagues on Congress' long-standing tradition in which the two highest government positions—the Office of the President and the OVP—are not traditionally subjected to questions pertaining to the budget and are duly accorded respect and deference.

According to Marcoleta, the decision of the House leadership to expel him from the six committees was due to him being supportive of the Vice President.

Duterte is currently at odds with the House leadership, whom she accused of plotting an impeachment case against her as early as mid-last year, an allegation repeatedly denied by House leaders.

The VP skipped—not once but twice—the deliberations on the OVP’s proposed 2025 allocation following a verbal sparring with House members who repeatedly pressed her about how she utilized the P125 million in confidential funds in 11 days in December 2022.

As a result of her defiance, the House slashed her funding to P733.198 million from the initial request of P2.026 billion.

The budget cut was poised to be realigned to the Department of Health's Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients and the Department of Social Welfare and Development's Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation, which would both receive P646.58 million.