MANILA, Philippines – Party-list group Bicol Saro, which has one seat in the 19th Congress, has a new representative in the House of Representatives.

Political operative and broadsheet columnist Brian Yamsuan took his oath of office before House Speaker Martin Romualdez during a plenary session on Wednesday, February 22.

The development came a day after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) issued a certificate of proclamation to Yamsuan to become Bicol Saro’s new first nominee.

The party-list group had kicked out its original first nominee, now-former representative Nicolas Enciso VIII, resulting in a vacancy in the lower chamber that Yamsuan now occupies.

Enciso held the assistant minority leadership post in the House and was a member of 28 committees. He has yet to issue a statement on his expulsion from Bicol Saro.

His successor Yamsuan is no stranger to legislative work. He was designated in 2019 by then-House speaker Alan Peter Cayetano as House deputy secretary general. He was also deputy secretary general at the time of the National Unity Party.

He also worked under former senators Edgardo Angara and Tessie Aquino-Oreta, and former press secretaries Rod Reyes and Dong Puno, according to his public LinkedIn profile.

Yamsuan attracted controversy in 2013 when he was fired from his role in the Malacañang as a consultant to executive secretary Jojo Ochoa due to his supposed close ties to alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles.

Yamsuan, who reportedly arranged Napoles’ meeting with editors of the Philippine Daily Inquirer at the time, was dismissed by Malacañang due to “conflicts of interest with his other consultancies.”

He tried to secure a congressional seat in the 2022 elections as the first nominee of party-list group Lunas, but it didn’t make the cutoff, placing 102nd in the 176-way race. – Rappler.com