Duterte Senators Stage a Rescue Operation, Not a Leadership Coup

By Joey Salgado

Alan Peter Cayetano is now the Senate President. Thirteen senators backed the leadership change, a hastily-assembled coalition with a single purpose: to protect one family.

What happened last Monday wasn’t a Senate reorganization. It was a heist done in public view, intended to dampen the political impact of the House vote that impeached Vice President Sara Duterte for a second time.

The ending of this political spectacle is already written. The majority intends to bury the case that 257 members of the House of Representatives found credible enough to transmit to the Senate. The 257 lawmakers who voted to impeach the Vice President exceeded the 215 who signed her impeachment complaint last year. Clearly, the case against her grew stronger with time. And that is precisely why the Duterte senators had to wrest control of the Senate leadership.

In his maiden speech as Senate President, Cayetano insisted that the leadership change had nothing to do with the Vice President’s impeachment. He preached about the sanctity of the process. This is trademark Cayetano - the Scripture-quoting, self-styled patriot whose moral grandstanding is inversely proportional to his actual moral record.

The Duterte bloc now controls the Senate. The Marcos administration, confident a week ago that they had the upper hand, has been outmaneuvered yet again (someday, someone needs to write a book titled “How to Win the Presidency and Still Lose the National Agenda”).

The Vice President only needs nine votes to avoid conviction. She has the votes to acquit. She has an overly obeisant Senate President to preside over the burial of the impeachment case. The Senate has given the Vice President protection from a political storm.

A brief aside, because it needs to be written: Senator Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa, who had been in hiding since November, emerged on Monday like a man who had just remembered he had to go to work.

He went into hiding last year following unconfirmed reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued an arrest warrant (the ICC confirmed the existence of the sealed warrant Monday night).

The former national police chief surfaced just long enough to cast the decisive vote for Cayetano after a brief, bordering on the comic, chase through the corridors and fire exits of the Senate building by National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents armed with the ICC warrant.

Hours after he helped install Cayetano, dela Rosa was placed under Senate protective custody. Cayetano placed the Senate on lockdown and cited the NBI agents in contempt. He emphasized that the Senate will not allow his arrest in the Senate, conveniently forgetting the arrest of then senators Antonio Trillanes and Leila De Lima inside the chamber during the Duterte administration.

Under Cayetano, the once hallowed chamber is now a haven for fugitives accused of crimes against humanity, and probably soon, senators charged with corruption, plunder, and malversation over the flood control scandal.

Now back to the larger tragedy.

The findings of the House Justice Committee cannot be dismissed as hearsay or political demolition. The Vice President faces accusations of unexplained wealth, misuse of confidential funds, and threats against the lives of the President and members of his family. The House committee voted 53–0 after finding probable cause, and a plenary endorsed those findings with a supermajority.

Under the Constitution, the Senate's mandate is to try the case, not to bury it in procedural questions, not to remand it, and not to run out the clock until the political winds shift.

But this Senate under Cayetano will not be a court. It will be a rescue operation.

The saddest part is that the institution and the country deserve better than this.

The Senate has been reduced to a retirement home for celebrities, a pre-school for the children of aging politicians, a launching pad for presidential ambitions, and now, a sanctuary for the accused and a shield for the powerful.

When Cayetano and the majority senators invoke the Constitution, the law, and the democratic process, they should answer a simple question: for whom?
The Constitution they claim to revere requires a trial to proceed forthwith. The democracy they claim to protect demands accountability. And the people they claim to serve, as represented by the 257 representatives of the House who voted to impeach, and the millions who watched a Vice President threaten the lives of a sitting President and his wife, are owed an explanation, not a cover-up.

The Senate has knelt to the Dutertes. The only question now is whether it ever gets back up.

This article also appears in Rappler