The Senate is a Sorry Mess, Thanks to Cayetano

By Joey Salgado

For those inclined to read doomsday messages in current events, the ascendance of Senator Alan Peter Cayetano to the Senate presidency can be likened to the arrival of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I prefer pestilence, with emphasis on the vernacular: peste. Nagka-peste peste ang Senado mula nang umupo si Cayetano.

Former senators have described recent events at the chamber as an embarrassment, with one wondering aloud if the Senate can ever recover its image as a moral force - a bastion of law, amity, and sobriety - when the new leadership has planted discord, conflict, and contempt for the very laws it is supposed to uphold.

The hatred for Cayetano online is near universal. But that won’t move him one inch from his lofty post. On the contrary, it only triggers his instinct to hold on and survive. This is, after all, a man who has made a career of ignoring and outlasting the disdain of those around him.

Unless Cayetano is ousted next week, we can expect to be treated to an extended political reality show featuring a fractured chamber with a cantankerous head of household and bickering occupants. This series eerily mirrors the House of Representatives during his equally tumultuous tenure as Speaker.

When the time came for him to relinquish the speakership to then Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco - part of a power-sharing deal brokered by then president Duterte himself - Cayetano defied the agreement.

He held the 2021 budget hostage and, when it became clear that his colleagues wanted him out, padlocked the session hall, cut off electricity and wi-fi, and in a final act of hair-raising shamelessness after his ouster, went live on Facebook from outside the Batasan gates, railing against corruption and betrayal as if he had not been the one doing the betraying.

Cayetano’s actions elicited a blunt statement from then partylist Rep. Lito Atienza: “Kung hindi ka tutupad sa usapang lalake, hindi ka lalake.”

Gentlemen’s agreements, it turns out, require gentlemen.

The first week of his Senate presidency was no different in spirit.

Cayetano moved swiftly to consolidate power, reshuffling committee chairmanships and effectively sidelining the minority bloc, exposing, in the choice of committee chairs,
the majority’s shallow intellectual heft.

The eleven senators comprising the minority bloc are now solidly pushing for Senator Sherwin Gatchalian as replacement, and are one vote shy of ousting Cayetano and regaining control of the chamber. This has been framed as a redemptive act - karmic justice after the sordid events of his first week.

But let’s not get carried away.

The election of the unflappable Gatchalian, should it happen, will not fundamentally alter expectations on the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte.

The political math remains grim. There are simply not enough votes to convict, regardless of who sits at the head of the chamber and who makes up the majority and the minority.

The Senate remains, structurally and politically, a chamber of the Dutertes. A change in leadership could clean up the air, but it would not change the weather.

During times of crisis, we expect our public officials to rise above the personal and the political not just in rhetoric, but in conduct. Their deeds are a more honest window into their character than any privilege speech, any carefully worded statement, or any live update on Facebook.

Cayetano has failed this test repeatedly and without apparent remorse. And the tragedy is not just that he is now Senate President. The tragedy is that he got there with enough votes from colleagues who knew exactly what they were getting.

The Senate has had its share of flawed leaders. But few have arrived with so much baggage publicly aired and thoroughly documented. And no one has dragged the once revered institution into a sorry mess.

This article also appears in Rappler