Spiraling governance that resulted in a fractured Senate and spawned rival Senate committee hearings claiming the same mandate was the product of a clear contest of political elites.

St. Benilde School of Diplomacy and Governance Dean Gary Ador Dionisio, in a Straight Talk guesting, said, “Ordinary Filipinos are put on the back burner of the decision-making” with the current developments.

Dionisio said such highbrow rivalry was behind the Senate rules requiring both majority and minority representation for any committee to function legally, the ex officio membership of minority leaders on all panels, and the fact that proceedings driven exclusively by one political faction, whatever its label, cannot claim legitimacy.

To follow that argument, one needs to have read legislative procedure manuals, Senate rules and relevant jurisprudence. Most Filipinos have not. Most Filipinos, Dionisio acknowledged, cannot afford to.

“An ordinary Filipino surviving on a day-to-day basis has no time to do that,” he said, noting that even educated, politically attentive citizens find the current Senate crisis bewildering.

When basic commodities are still expensive and daily survival consumes every waking hour, analyzing the constitutional validity of a quorum call is not on the agenda.

And that, the dean argued, is precisely the point and where the danger lies.

The Senate’s spiraling leadership crisis and the flood control corruption scandal at its center represent a test of whether Philippine democratic institutions can still serve the public interest rather than elite factional interests.

Dionisio believes the test is being failed not by any single actor, but by a political culture in which power is treated as a resource to be distributed among dynasties and factions rather than as a public trust.

He noted that surveys already show the public perception of the House of Representatives — historically the chamber associated with parochial, district-level politics — outpacing that of the Senate. For Dionisio, this is a rebuke.

The Senate was designed to rise above local and factional concerns, to legislate and investigate in the national interest. When it becomes a theater for elite maneuvering, it fails its constitutional purpose.

“The mandate of the Blue Ribbon Committee is not for the new majority or the old majority,” he said. “It should be a mandate of every member of the Senate.”

The implication is that senators who use the committee as a political weapon, either to shield allies or target enemies, are betraying the institution they were elected to protect.

The Executive also falls behind expectations.

On President Marcos’ unfulfilled promise to jail the masterminds of the infrastructure corruption before last Christmas, the dean was blunt: “We have a very promising administration — meaning, an administration that is over-promising but under-delivering.”

Early pronouncements made without follow-through fail to uphold credibility but erode it, he argued. And with the President’s net satisfaction rating having fallen to -15, the cost of the gap between rhetoric and action is becoming measurable.

What is the way forward? Dionisio warned the country is “closing on the Rubicon” — if public trust in the Senate collapses entirely, the damage may be irreversible. Structural reforms are urgently needed: anti-dynasty legislation, procurement reform, campaign finance transparency, and meaningful anti-disinformation measures.

But structures alone are insufficient. “These mechanisms require political courage, independent institutions and sustained public pressure.”

In other words, the burden falls not just on politicians but on civil society, universities, the Church and the media — institutions that must serve, in Dionisio’s words, as “a democratic force defending truth, constitutionalism, accountability and public ethics against personality politics and dynastic capitalism.”

The ordinary Filipino, pushed to the back burner, deserves nothing less.