THIS time, the superheroes crash trying not to save the world, but to save themselves. The way the Justice League imploded was out of character. We used to see them exposed to danger when people’s welfare was at stake. Now, we see them in the middle of chaos — which they may have created themselves — that not only risked other people’s welfare, but also their poise.
Welcome to the Philippine Senate, where a mob and cartoon characters mix, and it’s hard to tell one from the other. The mission is not to restore order but to provoke conflicts. The kibitzers see comedy, but the impact on public well-being is tragedy.
The mob boss is Alan Peter Cayetano, the Bible-quoting Superman. He is the man with a plan. His kindred sees through him the path to saving Vice President Sara Duterte from public shaming. The appearance on May 11, 2026, of Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, who had been in hiding for six months, surprised everyone except the boss.
Dela Rosa is the Flash and Batoman combined. His vote helped elect Superman as Senate president, replacing Vicente Sotto III. Triumphant, Superman said that the coup he mounted had nothing to do with Sara’s impeachment, which the House of Representatives approved, 257-25, on that same day.
Three days later, on May 14, 2026, the Flash was gone. He arrived panting and left in a huff. Footage of his game-changing exploits is viewable online for the world to see. They can, I guess, be awe-inspiring for his fans, but I would be embarrassed if I were his grandkid.
True to form, sidekick Robin aided Batoman’s escape. Superman was as quick with his mouth to correct the dumb: Bato did not escape; he left. There was nothing to escape from; the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court may have exposed his lack of spine, but it is unenforceable unless sanctioned by local courts.
This argument was unfortunately shot down by a recent ruling of the Supreme Court denying Batoman his plea for urgent relief from the fangs of the ICC arrest warrant. It now remains to be seen what the defiance will sound like. Batoman’s camp filed a motion for reconsideration forthwith.
Robin’s defense of Batoman dovetails that of Superman and the chant of protest against ex-Superman Rodrigo Duterte’s detention by the ICC at The Hague, Netherlands. Asked who Batoman was hiding from, sidekick Robin said “kidnapper.” “Ayaw n’yang ma-kidnap (He does not want to be kidnapped),” he said. The belligerent counter-charge that the administration kidnapped Duterte applies to any attempt to enforce the arrest warrant on Batoman, and possibly anyone of his kind in a similar situation.
Robin hurts the reputation of the Justice League. The kidnapper is not to be avoided. It must be confronted. And the best way to do that is to debunk the charges against his master. The process starts with submitting to the authority that issued the warrant against him.
That is the sober part. The glitzy segment of the show happened a few hours before the escape.
Those who have been fascinated by the world of make-believe are probably familiar with the usefulness of a smokescreen. A grenade explodes one way so that the main character can hack it the other way. Even magicians use props with the right hand so the left hand can produce the rabbit unnoticed.
Bursts of gunfire rattled an already tense atmosphere inside the Senate premises. Superman yelled that the Senate was under attack. Superwoman Pia later supplied more optics, shedding tears to show how genuine her experience from the siege was. And yet, as the initial findings of the investigation show, 39 of 44 spent shells were unloaded from firearms owned by the Senate sergeant-at-arms. It looked more like a staged mayhem than anything else.
But the three-day madness of May was eventful not only for its spectacle but also for its hushed undertones.
It showed that the Justice League will do whatever it takes to manage the impeachment process in Sara’s favor. It seems the conquering new majority must nurture a collective hope of untangling themselves from their alleged association with anomalies if roadblocks are removed for the vice president’s gallop to Malacañang in 2028.
It also showed that Superman will do whatever it takes to become Senate president. He may have convinced Batoman to risk his relative freedom by letting the latter see what he sees: that presiding over the impeachment court’s proceedings ensured Sara’s acquittal. But the boss does not have to bare his soul to underlings: The impeachment may or may not rank high in the hierarchy of his ambitions, depending on where opportunities converge.
His character showed when, not too long ago, he tried to ditch a term-sharing agreement with Alan Velasco for the speakership of the House of Representatives. He hogged power with the tenacity of a skin disease. He promoted half of his colleagues to the position of deputy speaker in a shameless tactic to mobilize support for his leadership, effectively bribing his colleagues with more resources under their command and committing taxpayers’ money to their dissipation for personal gain.
Thanks to Superman, the Senate is in ruins. What the people acknowledged as an institution for close to a century, the Justice League has, in three days, been left groping for relevance. Already, the call for its abolition has reverberated from an impatient segment of the taxpaying public. My own proposal is for the people to directly assume the roles currently delegated by the Constitution to both houses of Congress, and to reposition the elected congresspeople to serve as facilitators of legislative processes. I sketched the outline of this reform agenda in “The PowerPI Project: Government by the People.”
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