FORMER Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano of Taguig-Pateros has thanked Sen. Ralph Recto for the “warm and sincere appreciation” of his hard work and performance as Speaker for more than a year.
“I appreciate Senator Recto’s assessment of our work in the House of the People. It was indeed short but we were able to maximize it for the people’s benefit,” Cayetano said.
Cayetano was referring to a statement Recto had issued on Tuesday describing his term as House Speaker as “short but spectacular.”
“He passed all the bills the Palace requested, plus those which are products of the House’s policy ingenuity, which he harnessed in full,” Recto said in a statement released on the same day Cayetano tendered his irrevocable resignation as House Speaker.
Cayetano said the past 15 months of his Speakership “have been challenging yet very fulfilling because we were able to lay the foundations of transforming the House of Representatives to become the House of the people.”
“I am optimistic that Senator Recto and I as well as our colleagues in the House of Representatives can continue to work in support of our distressed Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), including those repatriated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.
In his statement, Recto recalled that Cayetano made it a point to be always accessible wherever he was in the world — even when he accepted President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte’s appointment as Foreign Affairs Secretary.
“I am writing this to thank him for his service to the nation as House leader. Old school as it may sound, but in this age when the new is hailed and the old is forgotten, I believe that the courtesy of appreciating the good a person had done should continue as an honored tradition,” Recto said.
