THE OTHER SHIFT Love Marie “Heart Evangelista” Ongpauco-Escudero (center), wife of recently installed Senate President Francis Escudero, now heads the Senate Spouses Foundation Inc. The fashion and entertainment celebrity says she and the other newly sworn-in officers will focus on projects for women and children. —Senate PRIB MANILA, Philippines — The split among senators was in full display last month after the sudden change in the chamber’s leadership.
And the distancing appears to extend even to their spouses’ club. The new officers of the Senate Spouses Foundation Inc. (SSFI), now led by its new president, actress and fashion icon Heart Evangelista, took their oath of office on Wednesday.
By tradition, the oath was administered by the newly installed Senate President, Evangelista’s husband Francis Escudero. As expected, since the program centered on the new officers, the spouses or family members of the so-called Solid 7 bloc were not present. READ: Emergence of Solid 7 stuns Escudero, realizes ‘separate group’ in majority The informal grouping includes the ousted Senate leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and fellow Senators Joel Villanueva, Nancy Binay, Juan Edgardo Angara, JV Ejercito, Loren Legarda and Sherwin Gatchalian.
Their faction emerged after Zubiri was voted out of the position by 14 other senators, who then installed Escudero as his replacement on May 20. Apart from Evangelista, the following spouses and relatives of the senators will have these posi.
