Deepening fault lines
The Senate is ‘perniciously polarized,’ according to a political analyst, and the divide is structural, running through the chamber’s very capacity to function as a legislative body.
Daily TribuneThe Senate is ‘perniciously polarized,’ according to a political analyst, and the divide is structural, running through the chamber’s very capacity to function as a legislative body.
The Senate reconvenes on Monday to face one of its most volatile stretches in recent memory, a chamber fractured by the events of recent months and burdened by the full weight of a long-in-the-making crisis.
What was once defined by deliberation and institutional dignity has devolved into a circus of rival factions, naked power struggles and a vanishing distinction between those who hold power and those who would seize it.
The numbers reveal the starkest part of the story. A razor-thin margin separates the majority bloc from the minority, a situation that can shift the balance of power overnight.
Every senator becomes a swing vote, every session day a latent rupture.
The Senate is “perniciously polarized,” according to a political analyst, and the divide is structural, running through the chamber’s very capacity to function as a legislative body.
When senators are segregated into rival factions with competing strategic interests, legislative outcomes are compromised and the institution’s credibility suffers.
The immediate flashpoint is Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial.
The Senate, having constituted itself into an impeachment court, now faces the burden of managing that responsibility while its leadership is under active contest.
The impeachment trial cannot define the Senate since the institution is more than any one individual, according to a political pundit. It has bigger legislative functions, in that it still has to deliberate on the budget, attend to pending legislation and perform oversight functions that must not pause for political warfare.
Intense politicking, however, is a given. The government’s recent legal and political moves against members of the majority have only added fuel to an already volatile situation.
The actions against certain senators are recalibrating the chamber’s arithmetic. Senators facing legal exposure have heightened personal stakes in the leadership contest, making any prospect of bipartisan realignment harder to achieve.
The developments in the Senate show that as early as two years before the crucial May 2028 polls, major factions are betting all in, since the Vice President, despite the impeachment trial, remains a potent electoral figure.
In poker, players who believe they hold a strong hand do not fold under pressure — they raise the ante instead.
The risk is that a game played this aggressively in the Senate will cause damage that will outlast any individual political outcome.
Burned relationships, broken procedural norms, and an exhausted public trust are the probable collateral costs of confrontational politics played to the hilt.
However, it would be up to the chamber’s leadership to transcend factional frictions and find the political space to realign the senators toward collaborative rather than adversarial conduct.
The chamber’s temperature needs a reset. Whether a positive realignment is achievable given the current balance of forces, is a separate and harder question.
Monday’s session opens against a backdrop of institutional strain that no single vote or maneuver will likely fully resolve.
It appears that for the first time in its recent history, the Senate is at war with itself.
Holding the Senate together will require a conspicuously scarce quality: statesmanship.