The majority senators led by Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano were nowhere to be seen at the scheduled start of the 5 p.m. session on Monday and well into the evening. There was neither word nor explanation to the minority bloc (all 11 present and accounted for). Shortly the man posted online that the minority should join a “deliberate act”: to “go quiet” and “stand for the Senate’s independence.”
A ridiculous stance, and, to those appalled by the goings-on in the chamber since Cayetano and his allies seized power on May 11, an apparent offshoot of the afternoon arrest of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada on a plunder charge connected to the flood control corruption scandal, as well as—the troll farms’ current tack of tit for tat—of the minority’s Friday walkout that put the damper on the majority’s patent rush to amend the rules on senators’ remote participation in the chamber’s proceedings.
The minority senators were quick to call the majority’s no-show for what it is: a “boycott of duty” arising primarily from the arrest of one of their own in the Senate premises on suspicion of the nonbailable crime. They put it correctly: “Today was a step toward accountability in a controversy that the public has long demanded action on, and after years of people asking why nothing was happening in flood control investigations, it is unacceptable to suddenly call the rule of law an attack on the Senate.”
Is the Senate President “now questioning the rule of law?” the minority bloc wanted to know.
‘Upper chamber’
The so-called “upper chamber” is being stripped of dignity by the day under Senate President Cayetano, even as, incredibly, he persists in declaring that it was the Divine that put him there. Nary a peep was heard on Monday night from his motley crew about their no-show, not even from Majority Leader Joel Villanueva who, curiously, doesn’t seem insulted by his continued appointment in an acting capacity, or Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda, from whom endorsements have been withdrawn by groups that once held her in esteem.
And Estrada—no stranger to the crime of plunder, having been thus charged and acquitted twice already in his history as a senator of the realm—let loose with a touch of intrigue along with an avowal of principles and staunch loyalty thereto. In a presser on Monday afternoon, he claimed to have been offered the dismissal of his cases in exchange for abandoning his cohorts and defecting to the minority—and to have found the prospect unacceptable. “My conviction to remain with my colleagues in the independent majority bloc prevailed,” he announced.
He claimed that the offer was made several times. But he mentioned no names or dates, not even a shred of circumstance or a tenuous link to possible proof, that may give the bored listener pause. Here is another instance of a government official talking at constituents as though they were simple-minded folk certain to be excited by a bit of “official” intel bestowed from on high. Another majority senator, President Marcos Jr.’s estranged manang, operates along that line: Sen. Imee Marcos will shoot her mouth off on large bonuses for those House members who voted for Vice President Sara Duterte’s second impeachment, or—on the Senate floor no less—she will make a presentation on “con-ass” and “no-el,” complete with a video of questionable origin and hysterical production, that she will eventually be forced to withdraw from the record. All without evidence for the public benefit and on which to stake her reputation, all chatter for the idle to feed on, all for show.
To be clear: Estrada is accused of receiving ₱573 million in kickbacks, per the case filed by the Office of the Ombudsman at the Sandiganbayan. He strenuously denies wrongdoing. But this case did not arise only after the power play that installed Cayetano as Senate president (and that suggested how the impeachment court which would try the Veep would proceed). At a House hearing in September 2025, a then district engineer testified that budget insertions in Bulacan’s flood control projects were made to allow Estrada to receive a 30% cut. “Case records point to an accumulated sum of illicit payouts amounting to an aggregate sum of over ₱574 million which were systematically delivered to the principal respondent, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada,” the Inquirer quoted Assistant Ombudsman Mico Clavano as saying.
Estrada’s co-respondents are former public works secretary Manuel Bonoan and three current and former district engineers. He is also charged with graft, for which he has posted bail of ₱90,000.
Details of the corruption in flood control projects, unprecedented in shamelessness, began filtering out midyear in 2025, galvanizing Filipinos into huge protest assemblies nationwide. The promised scenario of ranking officials clapped in prison and tried on charges struck a rut with “only” ex-senator Bong Revilla and lesser personages doing time at the new jail facility in Payatas, Quezon City. Per reports, Estrada is now being held there.
Theatrics
But Cayetano now asserts that the sanctity of the Senate has been assaulted, against which all its members should protest “in quiet.” Yet the “attack” on the chamber that was the shooting triggered by the Senate sergeant at arms on May 13 hasn’t even been properly investigated under his leadership—“as if nothing happened,” as Sen. Risa Hontiveros astutely pointed out. It was Hontiveros’ correct point that his sister, Sen. Pia Cayetano, promptly attempted to deflect with a hammy act that would have been funny if it weren’t exceedingly infuriating.
These theatrics are tiresome and objectionable. Humiliating, too, despite Cayetano’s failure to notice, if not to him then to his family and even to the memory of the “Compañero” whose name he has claimed for himself. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone who loves him that will tell him so.
The blue ribbon committee’s inquiry into the corruption in flood control projects—once handled by Sen. Panfilo Lacson, whose partial committee report recommended the investigation of sitting lawmakers and which lacked two signatures for it to be discussed in plenary session—resumes on June 4. Under Cayetano’s leadership, Pia Cayetano now chairs the committee, with Estrada and Sen. Rodante Marcoleta as cochairs. Marcoleta is to head a subcommittee that will take up the corruption inquiry.
Marcoleta himself is up against complaints of plunder, indirect bribery, violation of the prohibition on officials accepting gifts, and perjury. He has admitted receiving ₱75 million in undeclared donations for the 2025 election campaign.
Imagine it. This is the way it goes in the Senate that families of pre-martial-law senators now describe as a “disgrace.” CS
