Former senators recall Senate coup sans mace in 1991

The House proceedings to elect former President and Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Speaker of the House of Representatives started without the House mace, the symbol of the plenary's authority, installed in the rostrum.

In a session after President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his State of the Nation Address on Monday, the importance of the mace came to fore when Nueva Ecija Representative Magnolia Antonina moved that it be produced before they could proceeded to oust erstwhile Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez of Davao Del Norte.

But even before the mace was produced, Deputy Speaker Fredenil Castro moved to resume the session, saying that the mace was "merely symbolic," and that its presence could not take precedence of the authority of the House members in the session hall.

The mace was found and placed in its rightful place in the plenary before Arroyo was elected as the new leader of the House.

It was not the first time that a congressional mace went missing amid a leadership row in Congress.

Former Senators Rene Saguisag and Aquilino Pimentel Jr., both members of the Eighth Congress, recalled that the mace went missing in late 1991 when senators voted to oust then Senate President Jovito Salonga and replace him with Senator Neptali Gonzales.

“On or about December 17(?), 1991, the Senate mace disappeared, taken presumably by some Salonga loyalists who didn't want him replaced by Gonzales,” Saguisag said in an email to GMA News Online.

He said the mace was later found but he had no idea who spirited it away.

“Vaguely, the mace also disappeared from its usual stand," Pimentel said.

Jimmy Policarpio, the chief of staff of then Senate Majority Leader Ernesto Maceda, said staff from the Office of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms took the mace.

Policarpio said senators had to do with a makeshift mace to open the session and proceed with Gonzales' election as Senate President.

“Ang ginawa ni Manong (Maceda) kinuha yung (makeshift) mace tapos in-open ang session. Majority floor leader naman si Manong n’un,” Policarpio said. —NB, GMA News