There was tenderness galore on Thursday at the blue ribbon committee hearing of the bloc led by Alan Peter Cayetano, by his own declaration “the legitimate, legal and moral Senate President.”
Ignoring the changes made on Wednesday in the chamber’s power structure by the 12-member majority led by Senate President Pro Tempore Sherwin Gatchalian, Cayetano and Sen. Rodante Marcoleta conducted the proceedings with good cheer, backstopping and deferring to each other with such smiling conviviality that they seemed always on the brink of breaking into a love song.
Sen. Loren Legarda — not yet dead and therefore still Senate president pro tempore, as proclaimed by Sen. Pia Cayetano, the Cayetano bloc’s blue ribbon committee chair — breathily welcomed the resource persons, the 18 “ex-Marines” claiming to have been bagmen of then Ako Bicol Rep. Zaldy Co. She called them heroes: mga bayani.
The same resource persons were gently pelted by leading questions by their interrogators, allowing them to speak emotionally about ailing mothers and siblings in between naming the alleged recipients of suitcases and paper bags of cash, and about the impossibility of looking their children in the eye if they didn’t serve the motherland: kung hindi magsilbi sa bayan.
Documentary evidence to back their claims of crime was neither demanded nor given, not even for the startling accusation of women being presented to a lawmaker for his consideration, with the additional info that tips were handed to those not chosen and sent home. Stories of women and girls presented as “gifts” to address (ranking) male lust continue to mark the Philippine terrain.
At a turn in the resource persons’ alternating testimonies on the alleged delivery of scads of money to current and former lawmakers and other public figures, Marcoleta tenderly urged them to partake of the food served them: Pwede namang kumain, or words to that effect. What was the nonplussed observer to make of this? The invitation to eat could’ve been a polite gesture if it weren’t so patronizing; it could’ve been made sotto voce, out of the mic’s range, or maybe in a note handed to their legal counsel Levito Baligod, not announced to the assembly and the viewing public. Food was after all not the main fare in the hearing, even if Alan Peter Cayetano made a point of thanking the Senate lounge staff for preparing it. Patronage continues to animate Philippine politics.
And in the meandering course of the hearing, were the “ex-Marines” provided the opportunity to explain or counter what the Philippine Navy was reported to have earlier said of them — that four were never Navy personnel and most had been dishonorably discharged? The signal was spotty in certain areas. The Senate customarily livestreams its proceedings but did not do so on Thursday. It also appears that the proceedings were not officially recorded, with neither Senate secretary nor stenographers in attendance.
Still, the hearing went on its merry, unstructured way, rather like a courteous free-for-all. The two main men remembered to get back to the matter at hand in between declarations on truth, its necessity, and the terrible effects of its absence; the dictates of the Senate rules, the Constitution, and the Bible that Cayetano swears to live by; Marcoleta’s surprising swipes at journalists on the take; Cayetano’s expressed appreciation for Sen. Robin Padilla’s “strategy” in getting his sister and the resource persons safely into the session hall (as though active Marines had put up a blockade); even an exposition by Cayetano on the extrajudicial killings in Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” and the victims’ alleged resistance to authority — nanlaban — that served as its primary base.
What was all that but a display of their desire for an “official” platform for their monologues in the form of Marcoleta’s blue ribbon subcommittee? And, importantly, an opportunity to tar members of the prosecution at Vice President Sara Duterte’s forthcoming impeachment trial?
Cayetano, beleaguered again as Senate president after that bruising, humiliating effort to keep the speakership of the House of Representatives years ago, needed something other than Facebook live sessions to belabor his points. At one point he took pains to examine for the media cameras the Thursday newspapers’ headlines that, but for the Star’s, he said, did not state his being “still” the Senate’s No. 1.
Marcoleta expressed a yearning for the blue ribbon committee that was taken away from him early on in his chairmanship. The attentive observer will remember that he was then conducting hearings on the flood control corruption scandal, and that he appeared to be pushing a tad too vigorously for the controversial contractors Curlee and Sarah Discaya’s entry into the government’s witness protection program. And, as it eventually turned out, he had been nursing a beef against the media all this time.
After the showing of photographs supplied by the “ex-Marines,” punctuated by Sen. Imee Marcos’ pleasant questions put forth as if they were discussing souvenir snapshots at the beach, the resource persons and their attorney were given a fond farewell. Baligod expressed gratitude and assurances of individual affidavits. Marcos and Padilla made the rounds to shake hands.
Marcoleta was provided the chance to explain his contempt for the supposed paid hacks in the media during the Q&A held after the hearing ended. Confronted by a direct question, he needed to be apprised of his damning formulation. He then admitted an enduring frustration at going unmentioned in the reportage of the Inquirer and the Star after speaking for some 40 minutes, “providing context,” at an Iglesia ni Cristo rally in January 2025.
He has apologized, but the danger has been done. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines correctly said, among other things, that his attack on the press constituted an attempt to undermine public trust in the media coverage of the continuing chaos in the Senate.
The Cayetano bloc considers the changes made by the Gatchalian-led majority in the Senate as invalid. As though she were speaking of commodities, Legarda quipped that she would order the transfer of one of their own to the 12-member majority to make 13, and get things over and done with. How far she has fallen.
Sen. Erwin Tulfo, elected chair of the blue ribbon committee by the new majority, has announced that its hearing on the flood control corruption scandal will start at 9 a.m. sharp on Monday, June 8. CS
Read more: New majority elects Sherwin Gatchalian as acting Senate president
