SEVERAL weeks ago, political circles were discussing the dehumanizing tongue-lashing suffered by the mild-mannered labor secretary Benny Laguesma. A senator, in the minority then but now part of the current Senate leadership, was furious at Laguesma over a tangential and local issue that, in the real world, was not part of the then-secretary’s concern: the implementation of the Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (Tupad) program at the local government level.
Witnesses said Laguesma, one of the gentlest and humblest people in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s Cabinet, literally slumped in his seat after the senator’s verbal abuse. He then took a leave of absence the day after, perhaps to weigh on the weighty issue of whether his post was still worth it.
A few days after the Senate leadership change on May 11, Laguesma resigned, citing health reasons. Was this change the real reason he resigned? Was this, perhaps, his way of avoiding more explosive verbal abuses to come from that senator? Or perhaps, his way to cling on to his idea of government: that it is a place where people of goodwill and good intentions serve with dedication and humility, just like the decades of service he had devoted to government. Not a place for spoiled brats-cum-senators who think dehumanizing low-key Cabinet members like Laguesma, and always acting high and mighty, is part of a senator’s mandate.
It is easy to connect the dots. Many in political circles think the verbal abuse received by Laguesma from the now-powerful senator was the real reason he resigned, invoking what was indeed true: health reasons.
In retrospect, judging the historical behavior of mean-spirited people in power, mean-spiritedness always comes with another major character flaw: mean-spirited leaders are, more or less, predisposed to transgress their sworn duty to uphold the law and the Constitution, and break ethical and moral boundaries while in public office.
Think of United States President Donald Trump and the sheer cruelty of his anti-immigrant policy that had been rebuked multiple times by federal judges for the brazen violation of immigrant rights.
There is plenty of evidence that the Senate leadership, as currently constituted, has mean-spiritedness as its most benign character flaw.
The critical vote that led to the leadership change in the Senate was provided by a long-absent senator who suddenly reappeared there on May 11 to vote for a new Senate president, Alan Peter Cayetano. It turned out the reappearance of Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa after hiding for six months had two reasons: oust the current Senate leadership and install political ally Cayetano as the chamber’s president, then seek sanctuary in the Senate to avoid the warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against him. The crime he is accused of? Being a co-conspirator in “crimes against humanity,” which is self-explanatory.
Dela Rosa made his great escape from the Senate in the early hours of May 14 — after legal experts said his claim of protective custody had a dubious legal basis — with the assistance of another Senate ally, Robinhood Padilla. Let this sink in: The escape from the law of a senator with an ICC warrant and 117 guns under his name was aided by another who is a pardoned felon.
Days after that great escape, plunder charges were filed against another senator in the current majority: Rodante Marcoleta. This is a lawmaker whose corpus of beliefs includes the non-existence of the West Philippine Sea. The vote to name him as vice chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee — the committee that busts graft of all kinds — came about the same time the plunder charges were filed. His co-chairman in that committee, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, has also been charged with plunder in connection with corrupted flood-control projects.
The new Blue Ribbon Committee chairman is “Crying” Pia Cayetano, panned by netizens for her recent dramatics in the chamber and called “the senator with the crocodile tears.”
Estrada is not the only senator in the majority accused of taking kickbacks from corrupted public-works projects. Two others, former Senate president Francis Escudero and preacher’s son Joel Villanueva, have been linked to the huge kickbacks related to the anomalous flood control projects funded by their pork-barrel funds. Lawmakers, private contractors and officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways have also been snared in the giant scam.
The public works secretary from 2016 to 2021, and before his resignation in early 2022, was Mark Villar, also an incumbent senator and a member of the majority. Under his tenure, a couple with barely any public-works contracts from 2005 to mid-2016, Curlee and Sarah Discaya, bagged multibillion-peso contracts from 2016 until mid-2025. Total amount of those contracts was P207 billion, mostly allegedly tainted with graft and mostly granted under the watch of now-Senator Villar at the DPWH.
Would you believe this same Villar, who presided at the DPWH during the improbable rise of the Discayas — now called the “king and queen of the flood control scam” — is the new chairman of the very critical Senate Committee on Finance. Finance? His father, former Senate president Manny Villar, used to be the “richest man in the country.” Last year, he dropped several notches from the list of the wealthy after a fraudulent evaluation of his “Villar City” property was exposed.
With members of the Senate majority looking like a rogues’ gallery, it is not an understatement to say they are driving the once-revered institution into an inexorable march to shamelessness and disrepute.