By Junex Doronio

WITH THE RETENTION of Marikina City Rep. Stella Quimbo — who profusely defended Vice President Sara Duterte’s confidential and intelligence funds only to expose later that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) spent P125-million CIF funds in 2022 in just 11 days — as member of the once ruling Liberal Party, (LP), the move has cast doubts on its moral ascendancy as an opposition political party.

Amid this quandary, some political observers said there is a possibility that a new opposition party or a coalition of opposition parties will emerge like the Akbayan of Senator Risa Hontiveros and the socialist Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM) which fielded the Ka Leody de Guzman-Walden Bello tandem in the 2022 presidential elections.

“The enduring tradition of the Liberal Party is to allow its members to take independent views on national issues in recognition of a member’s freedom of expression and dissent. Rep. Stella Quimbo is still a member of the Liberal Party,” LP’s management committee said in a statement on Saturday, October 7.

Once the ruling party during the six-year term of the late President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, the LP now has only seven members in the House of Representatives led by LP president and Albay 1st District Representative Edcel Lagman.

Quimbo was a former professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics who was appointed by then President Noynoy Aquino in 2016 as a commissioner at the Philippine Competition Commission.

She resigned in 2019, ran for Congress under the LP’s banner, and won the Marikina 2nd District seat that year. Quimbo was reelected in 2022.

The Marikina City lawmaker has been defending the OVP’s confidential funds, but ironically Quimbo also revealed that the OVP spent P125 million CFI in just 11 days as she was speaking on behalf of the Commission on Audit (COA) during the plenary deliberation on the proposed 2024 budget.

“What can VP Sara show for it? Nag-mass hiring ba ang OVP ng libo-libong informant sa loob lang ng 11 na araw? Nagpatayo ba sila ng daan-daang safehouse sa loob lamang ng 11 na araw?” opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros quipped.”Babalik lang tayo sa paulit-ulit na tanong: Saan niyo dinala ang pera? Naghihintay ng resibo ang buong Pilipinas.”

Amid the CIF mess, the House of Representatives led by Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez decided to reallocate the CIF to agencies in charge of intelligence and surveillance activities in the face of continuing incursions of Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea.

Ronald Llamas, political adviser of then President Noynoy Aquino and once rumored to be romantically linked with Hontiveros, said that “Risa is now the leader of the opposition.”

“Naipasa na ang baton kay Risa mula kay Leni (former Vice President Robredo),” Llamas said in a recent podcast interview. (ai/mnm)