JDV says he’s running scared

DAGUPAN CITY — Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. may be enjoying majority support in the House of Representatives but he still has the jitters about retaining his seat.

"We should always take a posture of humility, we must run scared," De Venecia told Pangasinan reporters in his residence here.

Of the 236 congressmen, De Venecia said 182 are supporting his new bid as speaker, well over the required 119 votes to clinch anew the fourth highest elective position in the land.

But it would the first time in Philippine post-war history that a congressman gets to sit as speaker of the House for the fourth time.

De Venecia admitted that it’s all subject to God’s will.

"There will be those who will sincerely run for speaker against me because they want to be minority leader. If you run for speaker and you come out No. 2, you automatically become the minority leader, you become the leader of the opposition," he explained.

Though he has held the post longer than any other congressman, he said he considers all his fights for the speakership difficult.

When he first held the position from 1992 to 1995, De Venecia created the Rainbow Coalition, a broad alliance of political parties committed to the programs of the administration. In 1995 to 1998, there was Rainbow Coalition 2. In 2001 to 2004, there’s the Sunshine Coalition.

So far the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD), Liberal Party, Kampi, at least 80 percent of the Nationalist People’s Coalition, the Nacionalista Party and the PDSP (Social Democrats Party) are now backing his new bid for the speakership.

"That’s the new Rainbow Coalition 4 that I am putting up right now, which we call the Sunrise Coalition," he said.

Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, however, chose to call it the Dawn Coalition.

De Venecia explained that what he is trying to create in the new coalition is sharing — of burden, responsibility and power, among others.

"Everyone will be given a place in the sun whether you are a first, second, third, fourth or fifth-termer," he vowed.

Barbers, for his part, said that he and President Arroyo have developed Lakas-CMD to be a centrist party just like the Christian Democratic parties in Europe so that they can bring in parties from the left and right of the political spectrum. — Cesar Ramirez, Eva Visperas