{"id":94123,"date":"2017-03-15T19:13:26","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T23:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=94123"},"modified":"2017-03-15T19:13:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T23:13:26","slug":"dinner-with-pres-duterte-light-personal-ejercito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/03\/15\/dinner-with-pres-duterte-light-personal-ejercito\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinner with Pres. Duterte ‘light, personal’ \u2013Ejercito"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ejercito<\/a>
Ejercito said this was the first dinner with Pres. Duterte were most of the majority bloc \u2013 15 of them \u2013were present. He said that previous dinners only involved around seven to nine people. (Photo: JV Ejercito\/ Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA\u2013It was more of a catching up event than an actual meeting, Sen. Joseph Vicente Ejercito said Wednesday describing the dinner he and fellow senators from the majority bloc had with Pres. Rodrigo Duterte last Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Ejercito said this was the first dinner with Pres. Duterte were most of the majority bloc \u2013\u00a015 of them \u2013were present. He said that previous dinners only involved around seven to nine people.<\/p>\n

Present were senators Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, Senate Pres. Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto, Senate and Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III and senators Manny Pacquiao, Joel Villanueva, Cynthia Villar, Alan Peter Cayetano, Grace Poe, Miguel Zubiri, Sherwin Gatchalian, Dick Gordon, Nancy Binay, Loren Legarda and Juan Edgardo Angara.<\/p>\n

Only three senators belonging to the majority bloc, namely Senators Francis Escudero, Gringo Honasan and Panfilo Lacson, were not present.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, Ejercito posted a photo of their dinner on his official social media accounts. He said that the dinner ended at around 10 p.m..<\/p>\n

Asked by reporters if the Senate reorganization was discussed, Ejercito said no.<\/p>\n

\u201cHindi nabanggit. (It was not mentioned). It was more of personal, very light conversation. Parang kamustahan din. (It\u2019s sort of like catching up as well),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest with you, wala kaming halos pinag-usapan na major issue. Ni hindi nabanggit yung aming mga investigation, walang binanggit. (We didn\u2019t talk about any major issue. The Senate investigations were not brought up),\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Ejercito said that the only \u201cserious\u201d topics discussed were the war against illegal drugs and tax reform.<\/p>\n

He said that the President showed them a list of suspected drug lords which included barangay captains and other local officials and stressed the need to continue to campaign despite criticism.<\/p>\n

The President also explained his desire to have an \u201cacceptable\u201d Tax Reform Measure Package since some senators had doubts on permitting it noting that it was \u201ca bit steep.\u201d<\/p>\n

He, however, denied that the dinner was a \u201cloyalty check\u201d stressing that Pres. Duterte did not ask anything in particular from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u2013It was more of a catching up event than an actual meeting, Sen. Joseph Vicente Ejercito said Wednesday describing the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":94124,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[16668,13135,4306],"class_list":["post-94123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-dinner","tag-president-rodrigo-duterte","tag-senators","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}