{"id":383269,"date":"2023-01-12T06:06:41","date_gmt":"2023-01-11T20:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=383269"},"modified":"2023-01-12T06:06:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T20:06:41","slug":"house-will-not-be-a-rubber-stamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/house-will-not-be-a-rubber-stamp\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018House will not be a rubber stamp\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_383199\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-383199\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/63bd22c58b015.image_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-383199\" src=\"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/63bd22c58b015.image_-300x155.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"155\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-383199\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Edmund S. Villagomez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Newly elected House of Representatives Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) has assured the public that the House under his leadership will not be a rubber stamp of the Palacios-Apatang administration.<\/p>\n<p>Villagomez said in an interview Tuesday that the 23rd House will not be a rubber stamp as anyone who has been following his political career knows where he\u2019s been in the leadership with the same political party of the administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI get a lot of frowns [thrown] my way because they\u2019re like, hey, the governor says this. I\u2019m like, well, I disagree. But you know, let the votes fall where they fall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Under his leadership as speaker, the 22nd House opposed and criticized many programs and actions of the administration of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and even investigated Torres\u2019 expenditures of public funds.<\/p>\n<p>Villagomez was re-elected Monday as House speaker of the 23rd Legislature, which is composed of 13 independents, four Democrats, and three Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Arnold I. Palacios and Lt. Gov. David M. Apatang won the November runoff election under a unified independent team.<\/p>\n<p>Villagomez said Tuesday that he believes that he, Palacios, and Apatang have the same mentality in a sense that they are all \u201cindividual thinkers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re all leaders and, you know, let\u2019s agree to disagree if we have to, and let\u2019s find a way to compromise and iron out our differences and to accomplish whatever goal needs to be accomplished,\u201d the speaker said.<\/p>\n<p>Villagomez said even if someone runs under the same party or under the same banner and just because those on the top say they do this and they all do it, then he can\u2019t see the point.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to continue to work hard and think hard too for ourselves so that we come up with the best product,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Newly elected House of Representatives Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) has assured the public that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":383199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383269","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}