Senate President Pete P. Reyes said he has no authority to expel Sen. Luis Crisostimo from the Senate just because Crisostimo is running for the U.S. delegate position.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as I am concerned, to resign is his decision. I don\u2019t know if I have any authority. Our legal counsel has not told me that I have the authority to make him resign,\u201d Reyes told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
Some lawmakers have questioned whether the Senate leadership would declare one Senate position for Saipan vacant since the Commonwealth Election Commission had already certified Crisostimo\u2019s candidacy. The senator himself has yet to resign.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune earlier asked Crisostimo if he is going to resign considering he is one of the nine delegate hopefuls, but the senator refused to comment.<\/p>\n
Reyes said he has looked into the Senate rules and that Crisostimo has not violated anything in the rules that would compel him to expel the delegate candidate.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo expel him, I have to find some violations of law,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n
The Senate president said that part of the constitutional requirement for the Senate to expel a member is for a determination that a senator has violated Senate rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich part of the Senate rules did he [Crisostimo] violate because nobody has pointed that out to me yet?\u201d Reyes asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we had amended the Senate rules to say that if a person is running for another office other than the position he is currently holding and his term is not up, that the Senate rules require that he should resign, then Crisostimo would be in violation of that rule. But there is no such thing in our rules,\u201d Reyes noted.<\/p>\n
If any member of the community feels that Crisostimo should resign they should take the issue to court, he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cAny member of the community has a right to take this to court and force the issue,\u201d Reyes said.<\/p>\n
Reyes conceded, though, that if he is in Crisostimo\u2019s position, he will resign.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I will resign because I feel that my ethics, my credibility, my principle demands that I resign. But it\u2019s not because you tell me to resign or somebody else told me to resign,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reyes says he has no authority to expel Crisostimo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}