By the time this column comes out, President Marcos may already have decided whether to call Congress into a special session this week. If he does, that should finally settle the Senate leadership issue once and for all. More specifically, it could allow the new majority to add a 13th senator to its ranks and formally elect Sherwin Gatchalian as Senate President, not just Acting Senate President.

The constitutional rule here is actually simple. Article VI, Section 15 says Congress meets regularly on the fourth Monday of July, but it also says, in very plain language: “The President may call a special session at any time.” 

That last phrase matters. A lot. It does not say only for budget matters. It does not say only for urgent legislation. It does not say only for topics specifically designated in advance. It says at any time. Full stop. 

The old 1935 Constitution had language allowing a special session to consider general legislation or such subjects as the President might designate. The 1987 Constitution dropped that limitation. So any online “experts” insisting that a special session must be tied to specific legislation are simply reading into the text something that is not there.

If a special session is called, the mechanics are no mystery. The Senate and House would convene just as they do during the regular session. Each chamber would still need a quorum. In the Senate, that means the current majority of 12 can show up and do business, as the historic session convened two weeks ago already established. 

But 12 is enough only to constitute a quorum and act. It is not enough to elect a Senate President outright. For that, Article VI, Section 16(1) requires a majority of all the members. In a 24-member Senate, that means 13.

And that is why the talk of a 13th senator joining the new majority matters so much. Word over the past few days indicates that the new majority may soon reach 13, possibly even 14. Once that happens, the last real obstacle to Win Gatchalian becoming the full-fledged Senate President disappears. At that point, even the faint lingering doubts of the holdouts lose any final shreds of credibility. Legally and politically, the issue would be definitively over, desperate protestations by Alan Cayetano notwithstanding.

And frankly, it would be about time.

The Senate, particularly the members of Cayetano’s bloc, have spent far too much energy and effort in chaos, posturing, and ill-advised Facebook live sessions. The country does not need a chamber that behaves like a group chat with security escorts. It needs a Senate that can actually show up in session, organize itself, and perform its constitutional duties. 

One of those duties, looming large over everything else, is the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte scheduled to begin on 6 July. Whatever one’s politics, that process requires a stable and functioning upper chamber, not one still tangled up in the debris of the (mercifully) short-lived Cayetano era.

So yes, if a special session is the cleanest way to let the Senate finish what it started two weeks ago, then it should be called. There is nothing constitutionally exotic about it. There is no textual basis for pretending the President’s power is narrower than it plainly is. And there is certainly no public interest served by allowing the institutional uncertainty to drag on any longer.

At some point, enough is enough. The Senate has indulged in enough drama. It is time to return to something far less exciting but far more important: actual work.