There should be no letup in breaking the elitist cabal in the Senate that closed ranks to cover Senator Joel Villanueva and help him walk away from a 2016 dismissal order after Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales found him guilty of stealing public funds.

Carpio-Morales ruled in 2016 that Villanueva and nine others were guilty of administrative offenses, grave misconduct, serious dishonesty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service after investigations found Villanueva’s project had “ghost beneficiaries.”

Carpio-Morales ordered Villanueva’s disqualification from holding public office over the alleged misuse of his Priority Development Assistance Fund allocation in 2008 when he was the Cibac Partylist representative.

Carpio-Morales said the Senate’s defiance of her 2016 order dismissing Villanueva made the Philippines a “laughing stock” in the community of nations since it showed the law couldn’t be enforced on powerful Filipino officials.

Her comment was a stinging blow to the Senate, which was an “old boys’ club” that shielded its members, making the chamber a safe haven for law offenders.

The Senate refused to enforce the Ombudsman’s order on Villanueva, arguing that Carpio-Morales had no authority to remove an elected member of Congress and that the chamber had its own disciplinary system through its ethics committee.

“Everybody wanted to be a senator because no matter what infraction of the law you committed, you would still remain a senator,” Carpio-Morales had said.

In 2019, Ombudsman Samuel Martires reversed the dismissal order, a decision that was known only to Villanueva and Martires.

Now, Ombudsman Boying Remulla has coined the Martires ruling clearing Villanueva a “secret decision” since it came out “when I said the Ombudsman would act on it.”

“Joel Villanueva kept quiet all these years; Ombudsman Martires never spoke about it,” Remulla noted.

The reversal was final, and Remulla conceded that Carpio-Morales’ order was “something that everyone thought was still valid, but it turned out not to be valid anymore because of a secret decision.”

The anti-graft guardian said there is no argument that will justify Martires’ withholding from the public his exculpation of Villanueva.

“It was a matter of public interest. He (Villanueva) ran for public office, he was elected senator. So it was a very newsworthy thing, and something that affected the public interest,” Remulla stressed.

The Senate’s failure to implement the dismissal order on Villanueva is the elephant in the room that may require the Supreme Court’s intervention “for guidance,” according to Remulla.

“When the allegation is grave, even if it’s administrative, your presumption should change; there’s no longer a presumption of innocence once the Ombudsman has decided. That’s the problem. We should all wake up to the fact that we can’t just sit on cases. Sitting on cases, that’s what hurts everyone,” Remulla explained.

He vowed to file a pleading with the Supreme Court to get an answer to the question of the Senate shielding its member.

“The Supreme Court will have to answer that. We’re preparing the necessary pleading to clarify that issue. Because if we don’t uphold it, then we’re not respecting our Constitution,” Remulla averred.

The senators’ invincibility should be pierced, as several of them have just been implicated in the flood control scandal.

Villanueva’s hubris must not be allowed to fester amid the repeated irregularities involving public funds in which senators may be complicit.