Senator Abaribe, who spoke in an interactive session with Senate correspondents, said the Senate was not aware of a letter as reported in the media in that regard.
According to the Senate spokesperson, the constitution and the rules of the Senate were clear on what a senator needed to do to defect, adding that each senator planning to defect was expected to write a letter to the Senate President in the name of his constituency.
“The Senate, officially, is not aware of any letter about senators defecting to other party, because any letter that comes to the Senate will be read on the floor.
“So if senators write personal letters to the Senate President, that is strictly personal between them and the Senate President.
“They did not write it for reading on the floor of the Senate. So, the same manner that you have the awareness of what is going on is the same manner we are aware of it, through the pages of newspapers.
“And I have had cause to say this before that the process for anybody to move from one party to the other is very well stated in the constitution and is open, clear and not in a way that can be misunderstood in any way. So, we’ll wait until we get an open letter from each senator.
“Don’t forget that every senator did an election on his own. There wasn’t a joint election. So senators can’t write a joint letter to the Senate President about defection. It must be individual and every person who has to leave, for whatever reason, will have to state his reason and also do it personally. And until we see that, we assume that nobody is yet to go anywhere,” he said.
Source: Tribune
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