Roque still House member despite ouster from party-list

MANILA, Philippines – Lawyer Harry Roque remains a member of the House of Representatives despite his ouster by his own party-list group as its representative, Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas said yesterday.

“We will let our quarreling members resolve the matter between themselves. In fact, the two of them are both members of our rules committee and we have asked them to take a leave of absence from the committee,” Fariñas told reporters.

He was referring to Roque and Ron Salo, the other representative of Kabayan.

Kabayan was registered as a party-list group in 2009. It claims to represent “transport workers, farmers, fisherfolk, industrial workers, urban poor, migrant workers and seafarers, youth and professionals.”

Fariñas was commenting on the decision of Kabayan to remove Roque as one of its two representatives in Congress. Roque accused Salo of engineering his ouster, an accusation the latter denies.

Fariñas said he and Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez have agreed that if their two feuding colleagues could not resolve their quarrel, they would consult with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) on how to settle it.

He noted that in the past, it was the Comelec or the HRET that decided on issues relating to party-list election and representation.

In a resolution, Kabayan said Roque no longer represents the interest of the group. It also said it has the right to choose who would be its representatives in the House.

Roque questioned the standing in Kabayan of those who voted to oust him.

“For this reason, I filed today with the Commission on Elections a petition to compel the party to hold a party congress so that the issue of the rightful leadership of the party can be settled legally,” he told a news conference.

“The Comelec is the proper venue for the intra-corporate dispute now brewing within the party-list group,” he said.

He cited a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that the Comelec “necessarily possesses the power to pass upon the question of who, among the legitimate officers of the party-list group, are entitled to exercise the rights and privileges granted to a party-list group under the law.”