Manila’s Benny Abante is new House minority leader

Manila 6th District Representative Bienvenido "Benny" Abante Jr. on Tuesday was elected leader of the minority bloc of the 18th Congress in the House of Representatives.

Abante's election came during the bloc's first organizational meeting a day after President Rodrigo Duterte's fourth State of the Nation Address.

During the meeting, members of the minority bloc posed no objection to Negros Oriental Representative Arnolfo Teves' nomination of Abante.

Abante was also a nominee to the House speakership election on Monday, but lost to Taguig City Representative Alan Peter Cayetano.

Twenty-three of the 28 lawmakers who voted for Abante as Speaker elected him as the minority leader on Tuesday. Some of these solons belong to the once-ruling Liberal Party and the progressive Makabayan Bloc.

In his speech following his election, Abante urged the minority bloc members to be "objective, critical" collaborators with the Duterte administration.

"We are not here to oppose only because we want to oppose. We do not want to be destructive. We would like to support the President in his objective for the Filipino people," he said.

Abante said he wants the minority bloc to be the "glass" through which public officials look at themselves.

"Let the glass be the one to tell them what is wrong with us. I hope none of us here would have personal agenda. All of us are representatives of the people and that our advocacy is for the Filipino people and for the progress of our country," he said.

Abante also vowed that the minority bloc will not be a "company union" with the majority, for which the previous composition of the coalition was criticized.

"Definitely yes, we will not be a company union. I can assure you that. In fact, when I was in the 13th and 14th Congress, there were times that I argued with the President in our personal talks," he said.

Abante is a returning lawmaker who first served as representative of the sixth district of Manila from 2004 to 2010.

Apart from being a legislator, he is also the senior pastor of the Metropolitan Bible Baptist Ekklesia. — RSJ/BM, GMA News