Witness the Senate and see an administration and its cabal furiously fighting a conflagration of their own making.
The new majority declared Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano’s seat vacant, installed Win Gatchalian as acting Senate chief, reshuffled committee assignments, and stripped Pia Cayetano of the Blue Ribbon chairmanship, handing it to Erwin Tulfo — all in a session convened under a contested 12-member quorum.
The sinister logic beneath the tumult was plain. The very next morning, 18 former Marines who claimed to have personally delivered — by land, sea and air — some P805 billion in flood control kickbacks allegedly stuffed in suitcases to fugitive ex-Ako Bicol Representative Zaldy Co and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez were scheduled to testify before the Blue Ribbon Committee. That hearing had to be stopped.
The pattern goes back to when Chiz Escudero was ousted last September on the very morning the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee was holding its third hearing on the allegedly anomalous flood control projects. Rodante Marcoleta was then subsequently stripped of the Blue Ribbon chairmanship.
Lacson took over the leadership of the crucial panel.
The 18 former Marines publicly alleged that they had delivered kickbacks from anomalous flood control projects to residences linked to Co, Romualdez and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. This is the thread that, if pulled, unravels the sweater all the way to Malacañang.
The public is asked to believe that the Senate erupted in a leadership crisis this week for institutional reasons. That the senators who had boycotted sessions for days, paralyzing the chamber and denying it a quorum, were motivated by principle and propriety.
Somebody would ask: “Do you really believe the masterminds of the largest infrastructure corruption scandal in Philippine history were all from the opposition?”
Between July 2022 and May 2025, under the Marcos administration, the government allocated over P545 billion for 9,855 flood control projects nationwide. The money moved under someone’s watch, orders and signature.
Eight months and nine days after the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee opened its first hearing on alleged corruption in flood control projects, its output was only a partial report that failed to secure the needed nine signatures.
That move was peculiar in that it did not come out of nowhere but appeared to be part of the same pursuit driving today’s Senate chaos: keep the lid on, reset the clock, change the chair and delay the testimonies.
Among other matters, the reconstituted Blue Ribbon panel under Pia Cayetano listed certain personalities to be summoned, apparently causing jitters to the real brains behind the grand theft of the National Treasury.
The Gatchalian faction had announced the Blue Ribbon hearing was indefinitely suspended.
The flood control scam did not happen by itself. It required authorization at the highest levels, sustained across years and two administrations’ worth of budget cycles.
Corruption of that scale does not sneak past a presidency, however disengaged the occupant.
And when investigators drew too close to the real mastermind’s front door, the political house suddenly needed renovation.
The garbage dumped into the floodwaters has floated back to the Senate and is expected to clog the pipes of Malacañang’s grand design for survival.
