The Senate’s tragic paradox

The tragedy that has befallen the Senate is not that it has become a deeply divided chamber. Divisions, after all, are part of any genuine democracy. The greater tragedy is that after the unprecedented chaos that the Senate has endured, the near-total collapse of what remained of its credibility and the spectacle of embarrassing itself before the world, no bloc has emerged sufficiently hegemonic to lead the institution’s rise from the ashes.

Not even the new majority bloc of Bible-quoting Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano, the Senate’s one and only “Ambassador of Jesus Christ,” can convincingly claim to lead the Senate with confidence. After orchestrating a leadership coup, together with his motley crew of Duterte loyalists and accused plunderers, he single-handedly plunged the institution into the depths of hell.

Cayetano captured the Senate presidency on the backs of only 13 votes, the bare minimum required to proclaim a new majority bloc. That Cayetano had to bring out fugitive Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa from six months in hiding and sneak him into the Senate so he could secure his numbers speaks volumes about how weak his two-week-old leadership truly is.

This has become more obvious when, after the chaos that led to Dela Rosa’s escape, Cayetano’s majority shrank to 12 senators, against the now 11-member minority bloc led by former Senate president Tito Sotto.

The gap is now razor-thin. It’s like Cayetano sitting on a chair with loose screws. All it takes is one or two senators defecting, or several of them suddenly finding themselves in serious legal trouble, and the chair collapses beneath him. This possibility becomes even more real with Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta now facing plunder complaints and the prospect of imprisonment.

Clearly, Cayetano is not leading the Senate from a position of strength, but from the threat of simple math refusing to compute in his favor.

The reshuffling of Senate committee chairmanships reflects this insecurity. Cayetano anticipated that the weakest and most vulnerable link in his fragile coalition would be the Villar siblings. As such, he moved quickly by placing Senator Mark Villar as chair of the powerful finance committee and Senator Camille Villar, head of the environment and natural resources committee.

Meanwhile, several other committees reportedly remain without newly assigned leadership and are still being dangled. The post of Senate majority leader likewise remains to be finalized, which allegedly irked accused plunderer Senator Joel Villanueva, who was expecting to secure the position for himself. This is not surprising. With an extremely small Senate majority bloc, committees become bargaining chips to solidify and buy new loyalties.

Will this be enough to preserve Cayetano’s grip on the Senate presidency? The jury is still out.

What appears increasingly certain is that Cayetano has lost the political momentum. Add to this his lack of any moral ascendancy, and his leadership of the Senate now resembles a cursed captain navigating a ghost ship. He may still be holding the wheel, but is unable to command genuine confidence from either the crew or the public watching from the shore.

On the other hand, the Sotto-led minority bloc appears to be gaining momentum, not only with previously independent Senators Migz Zubiri and JV Ejercito joining their fold, but also with the public beginning to see them as more credible. Notably, Senator Win Gatchalian is starting to emerge as a viable alternative Senate president. Cayetano’s chaos has created the very conditions for them to be seen as a stabilizing force capable of rescuing the institution from complete ruin.

But how do you rescue an institution with more than half of its members embroiled in active cases of plunder, mass killings and other corrupt practices? While moral credibility is necessary, it is not enough. The Sotto-led minority needs to gather enough votes to become the new majority to prevent the worst of their kind from completely destroying the Senate.

To do this, the Sotto-led minority bloc would likely need to engage colleagues they would otherwise prefer to keep at arm’s length. The objective is not necessarily to absorb all of them into their bloc, but at the very least to weaken Cayetano’s fragile majority, create political space for defections and “independent” repositioning and slowly tip the numbers in their favor.

Surely, this will invite criticism, with purists and cynics calling it hypocritical.

Yet, the alternative is worse. The alternative is the continuation of the abominable Cayetano Senate presidency, which treats the Senate as a sanctuary for fugitives and allies accused of grave crimes, a stage for selfish ambition and a weapon to obstruct justice.

The Senate’s crisis is both institutional and moral. Institutional because it continues to be dominated by political dynasties and governed through patronage politics. Moral because leadership during moments of turmoil requires integrity and vision, which are now in dangerously short supply.

In the end, the Senate suffers from a vacuum of trusted statesmanship. Sure, it has experienced politicians and skilled lawmakers, but very few remain whom the public can genuinely look up to.

It is no surprise that Senator Ping Lacson, a known anti-corruption crusader and one of the institution’s seasoned veterans, expressed the urge to resign. In these moments, the Senate can feel beyond redemption.

This is the tragic paradox facing the senators who are still willing to carry out their institutional duty. To save the Senate, they will be forced to engage with colleagues who contributed to damaging it to prevent the most despicable among them from destroying what remains of it altogether.

This is the uncomfortable truth of democratic survival. We rarely inherit functioning institutions. More often, we are left behind with ruins where we are expected to rebuild.