SENATE Minority Leader Pete P. Reyes says he is being excluded from committee meetings and unfairly treated by the Senate leadership.
“They are starting to look like a gangster organization. And those that are not in the gang are not going to be invited. You know, this is silly, to say the least,” Reyes said during the session of the Saipan legislative delegation.
Asked for comment, Senate President Paul A. Manglona, R-Rota, said “it’s unfortunate that it’s now April but we are still seeing some bickering which I believe is coming from the disagreement during the organizational session of the Senate on Jan. 14.”
But Manglona still believes cooperation is possible if politics would be set aside.
He said he would always “exercise fairness to every member of the Senate.”
He added, “It is my hope in the very, very near future that we can all come together for our people.”
Reyes, R-Saipan, said since his election as the minority leader last March 28, he has not been requested to participate in earlier scheduled discussions.
“Although there was sufficient time to inform me of the most recent meeting of the Committee on Rules and Procedure, I was informed of that meeting only after the committee had met,” Reyes said in a letter to Senate Floor Leader Joaquin G. Adriano, D-Tinian.
Adriano was off-island yesterday and could not be reached for comment.
“I believe that there might be some miscommunication with the schedules of the committee meeting,” Manglona said. “I think (Adriano) has no intention to exclude anyone in the meetings,” he said.
Reyes said an April 2 memo on a committee meeting reached his office on April 3.
He said he later learned that the memo was not for him but for Sen. Ricardo S. Atalig, R-Rota.
“In our rules, the minority leader is an automatic member of the Committee on Rules and Procedure, but…it is quite evident that they didn’t have any plan of notifying me.”
Reyes said he was told by the floor leader that he was not invited to the committee meeting because “they already have the vote, thus I don’t need to be notified.”
Reyes said the Rota and Tinian senators “will again gang up during the deliberations on the budget bill to be able to get more than what they deserve.”
He added, “So I’m cautioning the members of the (Saipan) delegation. They have to be careful and review all appropriation measures that they send up to the Senate and are returned to the House with amendments because it’s a clear indication that appropriation bills will be (held hostage). Even if it does not affect Rota and Tinian, they would hold it so that they can submit a rider in order to push their agenda in the House and so the people of Saipan would get hurt. This has happened in the past and thus this could happen again.”
Reyes chairs the Saipan legislative delegation.
Manglona said it was Reyes who “chose to become a minority member.”
He said Sen. Thomas P. Villagomez, another Saipan Republican, is with the leadership.
“If you want to criticize positively, you are welcome. But if you want to go in and just block progress, then that’s a different story,” Manglona said.
What needs to be done, according to Manglona, is to address the CNMI’s most pressing problems, which include the non-payment of health insurance, the budget and the economic slump.
Reyes is a former Senate floor leader. After the November elections, however, the six Rota and Tinian senators decided to form the core of the new leadership.
