THE minority bloc in the Senate wrested power from Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano on Wednesday, installing Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian as acting Senate president and declaring all seats vacant after Sen. Francis Escudero abandoned Cayetano’s group.
Escudero’s decision to cross over to the erstwhile minority bloc has made it the new majority with 12 members as opposed to the 10 in the Cayetano camp.
The dramatic power grab took place on the last session day of the Senate.
The new majority bloc is composed of Senators Bam Aquino, JV Ejercito, Escudero, Gatchalian, Risa Hontiveros, Panfilo Lacson, Lito Lapid, Francis Pangilinan, Vicente Sotto III, Erwin Tulfo, Raffy Tulfo and Juan Miguel Zubiri.
The new minority group has the following 10 members: Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Pia Cayetano, Bong Go, Loren Legarda, Imee Marcos, Rodante Marcoleta, Robinhood Padilla, Joel Villanueva, Camille Villar and Mark Villar.
“For clarity, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano is no longer Senate president after the Senate, with 12 senators present and a quorum declared based on the recognized base number of 22 under Avelino vs. Cuenco, voted to declare all positions vacant, including the presidency of the institution,” the majority bloc said in a joint statement.
“Hence, we voted to declare all positions vacant, although we could not yet elect a new SP because we lacked the 13 votes required by the Constitution,” Lacson wrote on X.
Escudero suddenly appeared at about 3:30 p.m. while the then-minority was waiting for Cayetano and the rest of his group mates to arrive to hold session. They had been absent from the Senate for two session days.
Sotto declared all seats vacant and nominated Gatchalian as Senate president pro tempore. Zubiri was nominated as Senate majority leader. There were no objections.
The “new” majority was ready with a list of new committee chairmanships.
The new panel chairmanship lineup is as follows: Ejercito — Finance; Sotto — National Defense and Security, Peace, Unification and Reconciliation; Lacson — Public Order and Dangerous Drugs, and Accounts; Erwin Tulfo — Accountability of Public Officers and Investigations (Blue Ribbon), Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development; Raffy Tulfo — Public Services; Aquino — Basic Education; Pangilinan — Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform; Hontiveros — Health and Demography; Lapid — Games and Amusement; Escudero — Urban Planning, Housing and Resettlement; and Zubiri — Foreign Relations, and Rules.
The new majority bloc also replaced the Senate secretary and the sergeant-at-arms.
The impasse at the Senate stalled the approval on third and final reading of Senate Bill 2092 declaring Waling-Waling (vanda sanderiana) as the national orchid of the Philippines.
The deadlock also delayed the passage of House Bill (HB) 6639 and HB 6644 granting Philippine citizenship to basketball player Bennie Francois Boatwright III and wrestler Matthew James Ramos, respectively.
FB leadership
Lacson earlier called out Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano for attempting to lead the Senate through Facebook livestreams while boycotting its regular sessions.
The Senate is “indeed under attack but by its own leadership,” the senator said on Wednesday.
Lacson said Cayetano has been issuing notices suspending sessions and relaying other instructions to staff and subordinates only verbally, ensuring such questionable decisions would “leave no paper trail.” “What a mess! Where else can we find a Senate president who boycotts the regular sessions of a chamber which he is supposed to preside, then delivers speeches on Facebook instead of the Senate floor before his peers so we can interpellate him?” Lacson wrote on X.
He said Cayetano “is ruining” the Senate. “It’s become a shame to the Filipino people,” Lacson said.
“You’re the Senate president, you should set the right and good example. But you’re setting a bad example,” Lacson added.
He said Cayetano had claimed last May 13 that the Senate was under attack. “The Senate is indeed under attack but the one doing the attacking is the present leadership and that is sad,” Lacson said in English and Filipino in a radio interview later.
On Tuesday, Lacson and fellow members of the then-Senate minority bloc demanded Cayetano’s resignation as Senate chief following the latter’s absence from the Senate’s session for two straight days.
He said Cayetano’s boycotting of the sessions may be considered dereliction of duty and could be a basis for a complaint lodged by any taxpayer before the Senate Ethics Committee.
“Plain and simple, his actions amount to dereliction of duty because we have a duty to perform but he is not doing it. The disciplinary mechanism for this is the ethics committee. Any citizen of this country may file a complaint so long as the complaint has sufficient basis,” he said.
Ahead of the session, Aquino, too, called on members of the Cayetano bloc to return to session to pass important measures as the Senate prepares to adjourn sine die on Wednesday.
He issued the call after the majority failed to attend the plenary session on Tuesday or for the second straight day, disrupting the Senate’s work on several vital measures and other legislative matters.
Congress adjourns sine die on June 6. The Senate and House of Representatives will hold a joint session on July 27 for the State of the Nation Address of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
It is just “one more day” before the Senate session ends, the senator said in making his appeal to the majority group. “We need to go back to the Senate session hall and work for the nation,” Aquino said in Filipino. “We, senators, were all elected, and we were expected by our fellowmen to fight for their welfare and future.”
‘Get back to work’
Amid the deadlock in the Senate, President Marcos urged senators to get back to work.
“Get back to work. Because it’s important. We have a lot of work to do,” Marcos said after a meet and greet with Manila presidential scholars at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum in Malate.
The president said that several urgent measures were needed to address the effects of the global oil crisis, including a possible supplemental budget and amendments to existing laws.
“We had a meeting at the Uplift (Unified Package for Livelihoods, Industry, Food and Transport) Committee, and we need to work on a handful of laws. We were thinking of requesting a supplemental budget to amend certain laws,” Marcos said.
“We need these to bring relief to the people because of the ongoing global oil crisis,” he added.
The president also questioned the cancellation of Senate sessions for two consecutive days following the arrest of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada on plunder and graft charges in connection with flood control anomalies.
“There has to be a very good reason for canceling a session. I don’t think assisting a senator is enough reason to suspend a session,” he said.
Marcos, a former senator and congressman, said that under the rules, the Senate needed to inform the House of Representatives three days before canceling a session.
“I’m afraid all these events that we have been witnessing have thrown the Senate and its leadership, the whole Senate, into disarray. It has discredited the leadership, and it has stopped the essential business of legislation and government,” he said.
Marcos said that while the executive and judiciary continued to function, the Senate had effectively halted its work at a time when stability and government intervention were needed.
“I talked to my fellow senators at the time I was senator, and we cannot figure out why did this happen? How did we get here?” Marcos said. “That is anathema to everything that governance is about. I never imagined in my entire life — my entire political life — that such a thing could happen, especially to the august — it’s no longer august now — but to the august body of the Upper House, the Senate and the Philippines.”
“It’s a very, very sad situation to have to watch. The country is in need of assistance. People are in need of assistance. How can we provide that assistance without the proper legislation to back it up? That is my problem here looking at it from the side of the executive,” he added.
Marcos said the executive department was “examining all of their options” on what it can do with the Senate impasse.
“We cannot tell them what to do... They have to regulate themselves. And they haven’t been doing much of a good job right now,” he added.
The president’s estranged sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, who is part of the Cayetano bloc, shrugged off her brother’s appeal.
“If the President has a minus/negative 15 satisfaction rating [based on the Social Weather Station survey], I think, the public will not agree with whatever he will say or do,” Senator Marcos said in a text message.
“We are continuously working, the committee hearings have persisted and the documents for the pretrial conference of the impeachment are being processed,” she said.
Senator Marcos added, “In fact, we will have a Blue Ribbon Committee hearing tomorrow (Thursday) on the flood control [fund] scandal.” However, Sen. Erwin Tulfo, the new chairman of the Blue Ribbon Committee, said the planned hearing of the subcommittee led by Marcoleta would be illegal since all positions have been declared vacant, and that the Senate sergeant-at-arms and the Senate secretary have already been advised.
