Hard times, hard decisions

The House is undergoing a purgative period, beginning with the resignation of Speaker Martin Romualdez and the assumption of its leadership by the scholarly-looking Isabela 6th District Representative Faustino “Bojie” Dy III.

Based on the account of Deputy Speaker Antipolo Rep. Ronnie Puno, a confidante of Romualdez, the House leader’s decision to cut clean was made against the advice of most of his allies, which was to take a leave of absence.

“I said our belief, our opinion among the House party leaders is, you know, don’t resign, just go on leave. And then think about it, and you can resign after if you think that’s the correct decision,” Puno recounted a meeting among the circle of allies in the chamber.

Romualdez met with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday in Malacañang, and he called the Lakas-CMD party leaders after, where he thanked everyone for working with him and spending time to push forward the House agenda.

Then, Puno revealed, Romualdez told the President that he was resigning.

Still, Puno said, the House allies tried to press the leave option, to which Romualdez replied, “If I go on leave, people will say, ‘oh, he’s coming back. Oh, he’s just on the side. You know, he’s still directing things.’ It’s not going to solve the problem.”

Romualdez indicated his determination to face all the allegations against him, which was one of the factors that spurred him to vacate the top House post.

“‘You know, I’ll go before any investigation. I can defend myself, I’m not hiding anything,’” Puno quoted Romualdez as saying.

“I’m not afraid of any inquiries. So let’s do that,” Puno was told.

“It’s time to turn the page,” Romualdez added.

Puno said the leaders around Romualdez were quiet for a while. “Nobody was reacting. But after a while, obviously, we just decided to accept his decision.”

According to Puno, the idea of resigning was raised “at least three weeks ago.” The pressure on the House, not only on the Speaker, was coming from all sides due to the flood control scandal.

“One of our colleagues, in fact, had her children take a leave of absence from school because they were being harassed after their parents’ names appeared in the news,” Puno revealed.

Puno, however, said he steadfastly believes that most of the accused congressmen are probably not guilty of anything. “I mean, they were just included in the list.”

The resolve of Romualdez to defend himself and the institution amid the controversy is unyielding, according to Puno.

“It’s okay with him because he grew up with this. I mean, when he was a young kid, they would go to breakfast and they would read the newspapers, and it was all negative against their family. And it’s been that way for a long time,” he said.

“So he says, ‘I can take all of this, but I don’t know that it’s fair to subject my children to this,’” Puno said.

The seventh US President, Andrew Jackson, had said: “One man with courage makes a majority,” which was how, in a nutshell, the leadership saga in the House ended.

While the outrage has not died down due to the many abuses of public funds still being uncovered, dangerous steam should have been let out with the leadership upheavals in the House and the Senate.

Accountability, however, must be the ultimate goal — at all costs.