SEN. Imee Marcos speaks of corruption.
Not the corruption involving flood control projects that continue swallowing billions while commun ities drown. Not the corruption linked to campaign finance controversies. Not the whispers surrounding allocables, handwritten notes and political favors. No. The corruption she chose to highlight was the claim that members of the House of Representatives were allegedly “paid” to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte.
That is a serious accusation.
Unfortunately, it was delivered without proof, but with all the confidence of a politician skilled in performative outrage.
Yet perhaps the more revealing question is not what House members supposedly sold, but what Senator Marcos and her allies in the newly assembled Senate majority have themselves purchased in exchange for their loyalty to the Duterte political brand.
Because politics, especially Philippine politics, rarely operates on affection alone. Alliances are investments. Coalitions are insurance policies. Principles are often temporary decorations attached to ambition.
And what recently unfolded in the Senate did not look like statesmanship. It looked like politicians repositioning themselves for survival.
The coup against former Senate president Vicente Sotto III was presented as routine parliamentary maneuvering. Nobody seriously believes that. The speed of the realignment and the abrupt migration of loyalties pointed toward something more primal: political self-preservation.
The new Senate majority appears convinced that Sara Duterte remains viable for 2028. Like investors sensing the possible return of a volatile stock, they rushed to reposition themselves before the market rebounds.
This is what makes the sanctimony almost amusing.
On one hand, they accuse House members of selling votes. On the other hand, they themselves appear to be wagering their political futures on proximity to a possible future president.
If this is not transactional politics, then perhaps we need a new dictionary.
Consider the cast.
Francis Escudero, Joel Villanueva and Jinggoy Estrada now navigate public scrutiny surrounding flood control controversies. Rodante Marcoleta continues attracting questions involving campaign finance issues and the allocables controversy linked to the late Department of Public Works and Highways undersecretary Catalina Cabral’s handwritten notes.
And then there is Ronald Dela Rosa, now living under the shadow of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant connected to the crimes against humanity case involving Rodrigo Duterte. Bong Go appears to be walking toward the same legal horizon.
One can therefore understand why institutional shelter has become an urgent priority for the Duterte bloc and its allies.
Robinhood Padilla, at least, deserves credit for honesty. His devotion to the Duterte family is so complete that he once declared that if he were burned, the smell would resemble a Duterte.
Alan Peter Cayetano wraps himself in religiosity while quietly orbiting the Duterte gravitational field with the precision of a seasoned political satellite.
And then there is Imee Marcos herself.
A Marcos openly siding against her own brother’s administration in favor of the Duterte bloc is the kind of plot development even political fiction writers might reject for being too melodramatic.
Yet here we are.
Whether motivated by ambition, resentment or strategic repositioning, Senator Marcos has reinvented herself as one of the loudest defenders of the Duterte camp.
The Senate drama became even more revealing when the former minority suddenly transformed into the majority through the migration of Loren Legarda, Pia Cayetano and the Villar siblings.
Pia Cayetano’s move can at least be rationalized through family loyalty. The Villars are easier to interpret. When business interests begin attracting uncomfortable scrutiny, political recalibration usually follows.
And Loren Legarda? In her case, consistency has never meant ideological steadiness. It has meant the remarkable ability to glide elegantly from one center of power to another like a political butterfly trained to detect where the sunlight is strongest.
What makes this episode politically dangerous is not merely the opportunism. Filipinos are already familiar with opportunism.
What makes this different is the brazenness.
The coup was so visibly self-interested that it stripped away the remaining pretense that these maneuvers were about governance or national stability.
This was not about protecting institutions.
It was about protecting futures.
It was about ensuring that Sara Duterte survives impeachment. It was about securing relevance should the Duterte machinery regain Malacañang in 2028. It was about constructing a political shelter system for allies facing legal and political uncertainty.
And perhaps that is why the optics turned disastrous.
There was something strangely tragic in the image of Loren Legarda taking her oath as Senate president pro tempore. The faces of Imee Marcos, Pia Cayetano, Camille Villar and Legarda herself did not project triumph. They projected exhaustion.
They looked less like victors than characters lifted from The Trojan Women, standing amid the ruins created by ambition and treachery.
The latest Tangere survey delivered a painful verdict.
While the Senate’s satisfaction rating plunged from 44 percent to 29 percent, the House of Representatives maintained a 51-percent satisfaction rating and a 52-percent trust rating despite being the institution that pursued the impeachment of Sara Duterte.
The public’s message could not be clearer: 52 percent support the impeachment of Sara Duterte; 52 percent believe Dela Rosa should surrender to authorities; 83 percent believe the Senate leadership change was politically motivated.
Which means the public is not angry at accountability. What many Filipinos appear to reject is the perception that the Senate is being transformed into an institution designed to protect allies and obstruct justice.
The contrast is politically devastating. The House pursued the riskier constitutional path yet retained public trust. The Senate, meanwhile, lost confidence immediately after the leadership coup and its obvious realignment toward Sara Duterte and Dela Rosa.
Instead of generating sympathy from the dramatic image of a Senate supposedly under attack by armed men, many Filipinos instead appeared repelled by the suspicion that the spectacle itself was staged.
The reaction was not fear but cynicism. Not solidarity but disgust.
The Senate is now in free fall.
Its approval ratings have suffered a steep plunge precisely because many Filipinos increasingly see it as a sanctuary of lawbreakers.
And the most painful part is this: It is not its critics who are destroying the institution. The Senate is doing it to itself.
Antonio Contreras is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and vice chairman of the board of PTVNI.