SEN. Panfilo Lacson brushed off the claim of Sen. Imee Marcos that the minority bloc is seeking Charter amendments to change the age requirements for president and vice president from 40 to 50, to disqualify Vice President Sara Duterte from seeking the presidency in 2028.
In a privilege speech on Monday, Marcos inserted a video wherein the narrator said that Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III discussed Charter change with House Speaker Faustino Dy III to extend the terms of the president and vice president.
”Nothing could be further from the truth because what I heard was that they wanted to bring down the age from 40 to 35,” Lacson said.
”How did they cook up that story along with their videos? That’s simply not true,” he added.
Sen. Miguel Zubiri, part of the 11-member minority group, motioned to strike from the records the video, which he described as “horrible” and a “propaganda tool.” Lacson and nine other blocmates supported Zubiri’s motion. “So with that I support the motion of former Senate president and majority leader Juan Miguel Zubiri to strike off the record the portions that are offensive to our fellow senators,” he said.
Lacson noted that since last week, Marcos had claimed there was a supposed attempt to take control of the Senate leadership to pave the way for constitutional amendments to extend the terms of top government officials.
”We talked about how to save the integrity, dignity and reputation of the Senate, and nothing else. To say that we aspire to take over the Senate leadership for Con-Ass (constitutional assembly), never!” he said at the plenary Monday.
Lacson added that he witnessed a part of the conversation between Sotto and Dy where they discussed the speaker’s proposal to increase the number of senators from 24 to 36 — and not to extend the terms of elected officials.
He affirmed the manifestations by his colleagues in the minority that they never discussed Con-ass “in as many caucuses that we held or we had in different places.”
