BY WENDELL VIGILIA

FORMER senators Vicente Sotto III and Ralph Recto are eyeing positions in government after losing in the 2007 senatorial elections while former presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor and former senator Teresa Aquino-Oreta have already lost interest in accepting government portfolios.

Sotto, in a chat with reporters during the vin d'honneur in Malacañang Thursday night, said Defensor and Aquino are no longer keen on accepting appointments even if the one-year ban on accepting public positions for defeated candidates in the May 2007 polls has lapsed.

"Tutulong na lang daw siya," Sotto said of Defensor, adding that Oreta is also not keen on going back to public service.

But he said Recto is "definitely considering" holding a position.

The four were part of the senatorial line-up of the administration's Team Unity, which was beaten in the 2007 polls. Only three administration candidates won: Joker Arroyo, Edgardo Angara and Juan Miguel Zubiri.

Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said Defensor merely "laughed off" the prospect of holding a government position after his defeat.

Sotto, former campaign manager of opposition standard-bearer Fernando Poe Jr., said he is "inclined" to accept a position in the Dangerous Drugs Board "if only to have the law fully implemented."

He said President Arroyo intimated her desire to give positions to TU candidates in a meeting last year.

Sotto, principal author of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 (R.A. 9165), oversaw the creation of the DDB when he was still a senator in 2002. The DDB is presently led by Anselmo Avenido, former chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

Sotto said he would zero-in on the rehabilitation of dependents because this "is already one-fourth of the fight."

"The day you stop buying (drugs) is the day you stop selling," he said, adding that enforcement is just one part of the fight against illegal drugs trafficking.