What unfolded inside the chamber on May 11 was not democracy at work, but political theater so nakedly self-serving that it bordered on parody.
Senators shuffled alliances, replaced leadership, and consolidated blocs just as the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte was approaching as if the outcome needed to be managed before the proceedings could even begin.
And yet, Filipinos were expected to believe this was ordinary Senate business.
The public is not that gullible.
The timing alone exposed the real purpose of the power shift. A chamber supposedly preparing to act as an impartial impeachment court suddenly became obsessed with reorganizing itself. But precisely, at the moment when constitutional accountability threatened one of the country’s most powerful political families.
Even more absurd was the sudden reappearance of Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, who had largely disappeared from Senate sessions for months, only to return when the Duterte bloc needed numbers – to cast his vote to oust Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III and be replaced by Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, who had served as foreign secretary under former president Rodrigo Duterte.
The spectacle on Monday revealed a deeper truth: many senators are no longer interested in protecting institutions. They are interested in protecting each other.
Despite the House securing 257 votes to transmit to the Senate the impeachment complaint against Duterte, the new Senate composition already tells Filipinos how the trial may turn out. Numbers matter more than evidence. Alliances matter more than accountability.
And the senators, namely Pia Cayetano, Ronald Dela Rosa, Francis Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada, Christopher Lawrence Go, Loren Legarda, Imee Marcos, Rodante Marcoleta, Robin Padilla, Joel Villanueva, Camille Villar and Mark Villar, who backed the leadership shift did not merely position themselves to shield Sara Duterte. They also positioned themselves to protect a political network increasingly threatened by scrutiny and calls for accountability.
That includes the unresolved Blue Ribbon Committee report on anomalous flood-control projects, which implicated several powerful figures inside the chamber itself. The Senate leadership fight was not simply about one impeachment trial. It was also about preserving a broader system of political self-preservation.
The institution meant to investigate abuse now appears consumed by preventing investigations from reaching the wrong people.
This is why public cynicism toward the Senate continues to deepen. Filipinos are watching elected officials behave less like lawmakers and more like members of an exclusive club whose first instinct is mutual protection.
The Senate loves invoking its history as a democratic institution that stood against dictatorship and executive abuse. Senators frequently describe the chamber as the nation’s “last independent institution.” But independence means nothing if it collapses the moment a politically influential family faces possible accountability.
What happened on May 11 exposed how fragile that supposed independence really is.
And perhaps the greatest damage is not political but cultural. Young Filipinos watching these events are learning dangerous lessons about governance: that constitutional processes can be manipulated through alliances, that institutions bend around dynasties, and that accountability depends largely on whether one belongs to the correct political camp.
That erosion of trust will outlive any Duterte, Cayetano, or Senate president.
Because once people stop believing institutions are sincere, democracy itself starts feeling performative.
The Senate can still hold hearings, wear barong or filipiniana during sessions, and deliver speeches about constitutional duty. But after Monday’s spectacle, many Filipinos will struggle to see the chamber as anything more than a stage where politicians rehearse principles that they do not genuinely believe in.
The Senate was once called the country’s “august chamber.”
Today, it increasingly resembles a badly written political drama whose ending has already been decided before the audience even takes their seats, and the most insulting part is not even the maneuver itself. It is the attempt to disguise it as procedural normalcy.
If the Senate were truly confident in the integrity of the impeachment process, there would have been no need to rearrange power in advance.
