Senate President Win

At 9:24 Wednesday morning June 17, 2026, Sherwin Ting Gatchalian was sworn in as the 34th president of the Philippine Senate, the third highest official of the land and the leader of the second branch, the legislature, of the Philippine government. Win Gatchalian was voted SP unanimously by a quorum of 13 senators.

The other two branches are the executive (headed by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., 68) and the judiciary (headed by Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo, 69).

Of Chinese descent and a bachelor, Win Gatchalian finished finance and operations management from Boston University in 1995. He was mayor (Valenzuela) for nine years (2004-2013), congressman for six years (2001-2004, 2013-2016) and is now on his second six-year term as a senator since 2016.  As a politician, his advocacies have included education, housing for the poor, business enhancement and anti-corruption. In 2011, as a judge, I voted for him for the prestigious TOYM award.  He won for public service.

With the trial of the now twice impeached vice president, Sara Duterte, SP Win is in line for succession as vice president, in case Sara is convicted and removed from office, permanently, by the Senate acting as the impeachment court. In the government totem pole, the SP is third in line for succession to be president.

Former Senate president Migz Zubiri nominated Win as SP.

“Throughout his public service career as a member of the House of Representatives, as mayor of Valenzuela City and as senator, he has consistently proven his competence, his effective leadership and his unparalleled work ethic,” the Mindanao senator gushed, adding:

“He has ably led some of our most demanding, time-consuming and consequential committees, namely the committee on energy, the committee on economic affairs, the committee on basic education and, most notably, the committee on finance.

“As finance chair, he navigated a very challenging period in the wake of flood control scams coming to light. But he led the finance committee with great resolve, spearheading unprecedented initiatives to ensure accountability and transparency in the national budget. I believe that this last budget, my dear colleagues, was one of the most transparent in recent history.

“He’s the leader that the Senate needs in this time of division and disarray, and he has done this before. I know he’ll be able to rise above the fray and lead us back to our principal function, which is to attend to the work of legislation.

“As Senate President, he’ll be able to set the institution back on the right path, guided by the highest standards of service, integrity and morality,” Migz Zubiri concluded.

There have been 34 Senate presidents, from Manuel L. Quezon in 1916 to 1935, the longest serving, to Gatchalian, 52. The shortest stint is that of Alan Peter Cayetano, May 11, 2026 to June 3, 2026, 21 days or only eight session days.

In contrast, there have only been 25 speakers of the House of Representatives, a chamber that has had from 100 to more than 300 members. This means that a body of just 24 senators is more unruly and worse behaving than a Congress of 316 members, half of whom are said to be scoundrels.

These days, it seems congressmen are a better species of humans than the senators. That’s amazing, considering that under the Constitution, all appropriations bills or national budgets must originate from the House. Thus, congressmen have more opportunities to steal.

In the present Senate, there are four sets of siblings (one third of its total membership), making what used to be Asia’s most distinguished deliberative body a house of dynasties. Many of the dynasts are corrupt to the core.

Eight senators are actors, or related to actors or are media celebrities. This makes the Senate often the Philippines’ greatest show on earth. Their arsenal of gimmicks is immense.

Two senators are being investigated for stock market manipulation. Another two are suspects in the greatest government-sanctioned mass murder ever launched in the Philippines, the killing of from 6,300 to 30,000 unarmed civilians. The murderous senators seek shelter in the Senate using its “protective custody.”

At least five (21 percent) of the senators are suspected plunderers, with one senator already in jail and suspended from work for being a three-time plunderer. This makes the Senate probably the most corrupt agency of the government; one of every five members is – a thief, a certified thief, a repeat offender thief, a recidivist thief. Each steals so much there is a special vocabulary reserved for the species, in law and in the dictionary – plunderer, defined as one who steals at least P50 million in a series of acts of thievery.

In the olden times, a plunderer was a pillager, a pirate, a marauder, a raider. They were embedded in an invading army. Our plunderers are embedded in the Senate. The money they steal is called a budgetary allocation, or an insertion, or a programmed or unprogrammed allocable. In the Philippines, when the plunderer steals, he is called a statesman. Or a senator.

Iran war ends

Meanwhile, the Iran war, one of the shortest global wars but the most economically devastating and disruptive and the most expensive, is ending – with just a memorandum of understanding.

For 40 times, US President Donald Trump had announced the end of the Iran war. He lied. This time, it seems he is telling the truth. But peace will cost Don Donald plenty of money: $300 billion in war reparations on top of a couple hundred billion dollars of frozen Iranian assets that must be freed.

A $300-billion private ?fund designed to trigger investment into Iran is outlined in the US-Iran framework agreement, Reuters reported yesterday.

More than half of the $300 billion has already been committed, Reuters gathered, which said “the fund is designed to give both sides an economic incentive to conclude a final deal to end the war.” Washington and Tehran sign the one and a half-page MOU this Friday.

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