“THE circus” was how many in Philippine society called the once-revered Philippine Senate for a brief period, and that was from May 11 to June 17, 2026. On May 11, 13 senators staged a coup to elect one of their own, Alan Peter Cayetano, as the new Senate president; and June 17 was the day he finally reckoned that he no longer had the numbers to cling to that position.
Despite its briefness, the ignominious events that transpired during Cayetano’s leadership kept the nation transfixed. No other period in the post-martial law history of the Senate had generated more depressing media coverage than those chaotic 38 days. On May 11, for example, one senator surfaced in the Senate plenary after hiding for months to cast the crucial 13th vote to oust then-Senate president Vicente “Tito” Sotto III and allow Cayetano to succeed him.
That vote was cast by Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who, it turned out, has a pending warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court based on the accusation that he was a “co-perpetrator” in the bloody war on drugs of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who is now awaiting trial in The Hague, the Netherlands, for “crimes against humanity.” The drama that preceded dela Rosa’s vote took place at the stairs leading to the plenary hall of the Senate, where lawmen pursued him but failed to serve the warrant. At one point, dela Rosa stumbled, and the video of that part of the chase made it to CNN and the New York Times.
In the previous century, the Senate was at its peak, and the senators who walked up its stairs exchanged high-minded banter. Now, this.
As if the chase after the stumbling dela Rosa was not embarrassing enough, the scenes that unfolded at the chamber the next day had the intimations of a crime scene. Dela Rosa sneaked out of the Senate with the help of another senator: Robinhood Padilla, a pardoned felon and also a member of the Cayetano bloc.
Padilla, who would not let the nation forget that he is a “criminology graduate,” revels in delivering explainers. After dela Rosa escaped, he delivered a thesis on the meaning of “force majeure,” explaining that many events in the nation and beyond were so unpredictable and out of man’s control. That force majeure, he said, should allow dela Rosa to participate in the affairs of the Senate via videoconferencing while in hiding.
The move of the Cayetano bloc to press for a change in the rules and adopt videoconferencing was for the benefit of dela Rosa and another bloc member, Jinggoy Estrada, now in detention on plunder and graft charges. His indictment was related to his alleged involvement in the multibillion-peso flood control scam, now on record as the biggest official scam in history. The minority senators walked out of the Senate plenary after the proposed rule change by the majority, all for the benefit of a fugitive (dela Rosa) and a detainee (Estrada).
Was Padilla’s master thesis on force majeure the legal underpinning of the proposal to change the rules by the majority? That was not clear. What was clear was this: With Estrada and dela Rosa out and incapacitated by legal woes, the once 13-member bloc of Cayetano was down to 11, matching those in the minority bloc.
No matter, declared Cayetano. I am still the legal Senate president.
Cayetano’s diminished bloc tried to reassert physical and legal control of the chamber by conducting a hearing on the flood-control scam, which ironically had snagged Estrada. Presented as witnesses were 18 “ex-Marines” who, according to their testimonies, delivered suitcases containing flood-control kickbacks to several personalities, from former and incumbent politicians to others with no connection to politics and public-works contracting.
If you are old enough to remember the wild and reckless accusations made by the late senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin against so-called communists in America during the tragic peak of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, the “ex-Marines” followed the same script.
Named as one of the kickback beneficiaries was Fr. Flavie Villanueva, the SVD missionary who gave sanctuary and protection to the families of the Duterte-era drug war victims. There is no realistic condition in Philippine society that would tie up the courageous priest who stood up to Duterte’s brutal war on drugs to flood-control kickbacks.
Three former representatives from the Makabayan bloc and unwavering Duterte critics — Arlene Brosas, Raoul Manuel and France Castro — were also named recipients of flood-control kickbacks. This is another improbability, given that these three were outsiders in the budget process.
The new narrative on the flood-control scam was so brazenly beyond the pale that even two senators in the Cayetano bloc who were earlier linked to the flood-control scam — Francis Escudero and Joel Villanueva — said “enough.”
It was Escudero who first joined the session called by the opposing bloc led by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, which brought the Senate attendees to 12. Then, a special session called by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on June 17 was attended by Villanueva, bringing that number to 13 — the number needed to oust Cayetano and install Gatchalian in his place, a number that was beyond legal challenge.
What unfolded next was predictable: the Cayetano bloc packed its bag of tricks and ended the short-lived circus.
