What happened in the Senate last week was dramatic, messy and, for those still clinging to the old leadership, deeply embarrassing. On Wednesday, 3 June, the so-called SB-11, long treated as the minority, was joined by Senator Chiz Escudero to form a 12-member quorum and hold a session.
In that session, the senators present declared all Senate posts vacant, including that of Senate President. They then moved quickly to reorganize the chamber, electing Sherwin Gatchalian Senate President Pro Tempore and designating him Acting Senate President, with Migz Zubiri as Majority Leader and several committee posts reassigned, including the Blue Ribbon chairmanship to Senator Erwin Tulfo.
Predictably, the old majority, now clearly the new minority in all but ego, cried foul. Alan Peter Cayetano and his allies have been loud in denouncing the move as illegal, insisting that they remain the lawful leadership of the Senate. But that argument has one glaring problem. They no longer have the numbers. And in a legislative chamber, numbers are not some afterthought to procedural acrobatics. They are the whole game.
The legal defense of the new majority is actually straightforward. For purposes of determining quorum, the rule laid down in Avelino v Cuenco and recognized in later practice is that only those senators within the chamber’s power to compel attendance are counted.
In other words, if someone is outside the country or otherwise beyond the reach of that power, they do not count toward a quorum. That same logic, in a more modern vein, can also be seen in later cases like People v. Maceda and Trillanes v Pimentel, dealing with detained officials and their inability to fully exercise their office while under lawful restraint.
The details may be argued by lawyers for weeks, but the broad point is not exactly exotic. Legislative bodies base a quorum on those members whom they can actually compel to show up. This is the premise on which the new majority acted.
And even setting the legal doctrine aside, the political reality is even plainer. Before the now historic Wednesday session, Cayetano’s group had already skipped the two previous session days precisely because they knew they no longer controlled the floor. You do not boycott your own chamber when you are confident of victory. You do it when you know the numbers are against you and you are trying, desperately, to buy time.
That is exactly what this has looked like from the outside. A politician clinging to a post long after the votes had moved elsewhere. It is hard not to remember that Cayetano had done this before. As Speaker of the House, he tried to outmaneuver an arrangement he had previously agreed to when the moment came to surrender power. There is, it seems, a pattern here.
This is really the heart of the matter. Numbers have always determined who leads the Senate, as they should in a democracy. If a majority no longer wants you in charge, then the honorable response is not an abuse of procedure, public whining on Facebook, or increasingly shrill claims of victimhood. The honorable response is to accept the loss, offer the new majority a rueful “well played,” and then do your job from the minority.
But honor, sadly, appears to be in short supply, at least in the case of Cayetano’s group.
So yes, this was chaotic. But what it really marked was the system working to usher in the long overdue end of a low and damaging chapter in the Senate’s history. And with even more senators reportedly moving toward the new majority, whatever lingering yet misguided doubts about the process will be settled soon as well.
Quite frankly, good. The Senate has had more than enough of this circus.
