Was the leadership of Senate President Vicente Sotto III truly in peril last Feb. 4, when rumors swirled that the 9-member minority had gathered more than the so-called “Magic 13” votes to unseat him?
As the 3 p.m. session of the Senate began that Wednesday, Sotto presided over the calendar of business which included honoring the achievements of Filipino athletes who participated in the 33rd Southeast Asian Games last year.
It was business as usual for Sotto despite earlier reports that day that Sen. Loren Legarda, who belongs to the 15-member majority, would switch to the minority led by Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, along with seven other majority members, and that she would replace him.
But after a long break that came after the senators congratulated and posed with the athletes for pictures, Sotto was still very much in the saddle.
Longest-serving senator
“I knew the report that there were 17 votes [to oust me] was a bluff. If they had the numbers, there would be signatures, and they would have also informed me,” Sotto told CoverStory on Friday night.
And he would have resigned his post “because this has always been the case,” said the Senate old hand who, in this interview, described himself as “jurassic” in the chamber.
Now in his fifth term as senator after again winning in the 2025 midterm elections, Sotto is the longest-serving senator. He first served in the Senate in the 9th Congress in 1992, and is now the Senate president of the 20th Congress.
The challenge for the minority, Sotto said, was to get five majority senators to switch to its side to clinch the required 13 votes to elect a new Senate president.
Explaining why he had shrugged off rumors that the minority had secured 17 votes for his ouster, Sotto said he spoke to one minority senator who said he would cast the 13th vote only if they got 12 senators on board.
He said this minority senator, whom he did not name, eventually refused to endorse the coup and even expressed support for his leadership. (Reports in other news outlets named the senator as Bong Go.)
“You have to get the actual signatures of the senators. In other words, there were no 13 votes,” Sotto said.
He said he was “not privy” to the rumor that some majority senators did not endorse his ouster because it would mean that Sen. Rodante Marcoleta would wrest back the chairmanship of the blue ribbon committee from Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson.
On Sen. Bato dela Rosa’s continuing absence as a supposed factor in the failed coup attempt, Sotto said that even if the minority senator were in attendance, the minority still needed the votes of five members of the majority.
‘Stable’ leadership
Sotto made clear that he was not one to cling to the Senate presidency, saying he would step down if he had lost the trust and confidence of his colleagues.
How would he then describe the current state of his leadership?
“Even based on what happened, because of my relationship to the majority—and I’m talking to one to two members of the minority who are my friends—I think [my] leadership is stable, and that is the same with the committee chairmanships. They are well-oiled and functioning well,” Sotto said, adding: “I think the leadership of the Senate is stable at this point. And if there were any changes, it should have happened [last week].”
Sotto said the top reason the minority moved to oust him was the majority’s decision to replace Sen. Imee Marcos as chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations.
He pointed out that in the first place, that committee should be headed by a majority member. He said the majority had offered it to Senator Marcos in the hope that, being President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s sister, she would eventually join the majority.
The two Marcoses have a strained relationship further aggravated by the senator’s enduring support for Vice President Sara Duterte, from whom the President is estranged.
According to Sotto, the move to replace Senator Marcos arose because she had reported out only one of 13 treaties pending in her committee.
“It’s an embarrassment to the international committee if the chair just sits on the 12 treaties,” he said, adding that Marcos’ removal as chair was “the right decision.”
Draft committee report
Sotto conceded that the leak on Feb. 2 of a draft report of Lacson’s committee recommendations on the flood-control corruption scandal was another issue that stirred talk of a Senate coup. Among the recommendations was the prosecution of Senators Chiz Escudero, Joel Villanueva and Jinggoy Estrada.
Sotto said some senators wondered why the draft report appeared to focus on the prosecution of senators. He said the blue ribbon committee members met at Senate Majority Leader Migz Zubiri’s office, where Lacson explained that it was a draft report that needed their output before it could be finalized and released for their signatures.
“The final committee report’s content will be on the narratives that were made at the hearings,” he said.
On why the minority offered the Senate presidency to Legarda, Sotto said this was part of the “strategy.” He said that in past practice, offering committee chairmanships or the Senate presidency itself was a strategy to gather the necessary votes from senators.
Sotto recalled an instance in the 11th Congress after Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became president and Franklin Drilon lost the Senate presidency to Aquilino Pimentel Jr. Per Sotto’s account, the minority had 11 members but they were able to convince Pimentel to join them by offering the Senate presidency to him. Pimentel did join them and brought with him Sen. Serge Osmeña III, and the minority got 13 votes to replace Drilon.
But Drilon was eventually able to get back the Senate presidency when he got then Senators Noli de Castro and Robert Jaworski to join forces with him, Sotto said.
This time, according to Sotto, the minority offered Legarda the Senate presidency, but she told him and Zubiri on the night of Feb. 1 that she was not interested in it.
He said he did not know what else happened after Feb. 4, only that “they did not have the numbers.”
There was no power- or term-sharing offered to Legarda, according to Sotto. He said Zubiri just raised the “idea” that Legarda become Senate president before the 20th Congress adjourns in 2027. Legarda’s term ends in 2028, but she can still seek reelection.
“The plan to elect her later is an accurate statement,” Sotto said.
He also said that if Legarda seeks reelection, he would support her as Senate president. He said that she is, after all, a veteran senator like himself, and is the second-longest serving senator.
Taking it easy
Sotto admitted that he would also want to take a rest from the Senate leadership after 2028.
On Drilon’s recent comment that there would be continued efforts to unseat him, especially as the 2028 elections approach, Sotto said it was “possible.” But he reiterated that he was used to such moves.
Sotto said he was reminded of what then Senate President Neptali Gonzales told the chamber in 1992 when he was replaced by then Sen. Edgardo Angara in another leadership coup: “Friendship, loyalty, commitment, sanctity of the word, and good deeds are of no moment”—a “lesson” Gonzales was “taught, but never learned.”
Sotto said he keeps Gonzales’ words in mind all the time.
CoverStory then asked him: What makes a strong leader?
“Just work for the public good. That’s my line,” Sotto said.
He said that in the next two years, he would make sure that bills are prioritized for passage in Congress, noting that a meeting of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council is scheduled on Feb. 10.
In the next two years, he will make sure that succeeding national budget measures would be as “clean” as the 2026 national budget where, he said, there are no budget “insertions” and the bicameral conference committee meeting is open and transparent.
“We always say that the important piece of legislation Congress passes is the budget, as this is where the actions of the government emanate,” Sotto said. “We have to make sure the people’s money goes to the people.” CS
