By Diego Morra
Senate President Alan Peter Schramm Cayetano’s ploy to play the victim in the crisis that grips the Upper Chamber has bombed and he has only himself to blame. Obsessed with snatching the Senate presidency from Sen. Tito Sotto, Cayetano had to promise the Duterte bloc at the Senate that he would scupper the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio while goading Sen. Loren Legarda to ditch her erstwhile firm allies in the majority. He never thought that betraying Legarda and enticing de la Rosa to join the coup would lead to a crisis.
Cayetano is notorious for breaking promises, like refusing to yield the speakership after cutting a deal to serve only half of the three-year term. He also plotted with a Duterte *pooh bah to wrest the speakership from a Visayan congressman who was Duterte’s original choice to head the House of Representatives. As the bright boy of Duterte Sr., he also headed the preparations of the Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) games in 2019 that cost the republic P15billion, with an expensive P55 million “cauldron” as the centerpiece of the extravaganza held in what was described as a “desolate” piece of land. Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon should enlighten all of us if the Cayetano “kaldero” was, indeed, a piece of art, or a mere monument for profitable “artism.”
Of course, Cayetano also flirted with activism and if campus stories were not apocryphal, he namedropped his way out of an arrest, as a fellow activist and active journalist noted. Some kids enjoy having fathers who are smarter than others. Another campus figure was also notorious for bargaining for higher grades and she looks so similar as a pretty but aging member of the Senate. After succeeding in their betrayal of Sotto and Sen. Panfilo Lacson, Cayetano and Legarda became the leaders who had the unenviable task of maintaining order in a chamber addicted to chaos. The usually polite half of the country’s legislature invited trouble on May 11, 2026 by welcoming de la Rosa who had spent months in his agarwood plantation in the Davao region, only to heed Cayetano’s plea to “reform” the Senate to Sara’s advantage. Naturally, Cayetano had to reassure de la Rosa that he is guaranteed protection from the Interpol, which had transmitted his warrant of arrest to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI.)
When the NBI agents arrived to arrest de la Rosa pursuant to the provisions of the Rome Statute that the Senate had ratified as well as the mandate of Republic Act No. 9851 to arrest persons charged by international tribunals with genocide, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, Cayetano was naturally alarmed. So, he declared that the Senate under his leadership was putting de la Rosa forthwith under its “protective custody,” a legal phantom according to former Senate President Franklin Drilon, and no protection can be invoked on fugitives or defendants in ICC cases.
As gunshots were heard on the second floor of the rented Senate building, Cayetano was alarmed and slammed the “attack” on the chamber, only to be proven wrong as videos showed newfangled Senate Sergeant-at-Arms and de la Rosa’s classmate at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), ex-major general Mao Aplasca, was the lone gunman who peppered the hallway with 37 bullets, the biggest number of warning shots in the country’s history. So, glass panels were shot up to create the myth that a single “NBI” agent was attacking squads of Marines and platoons of Aplasca’s men. Cayetano’s claim evaporated as soon as CCTV footage showed Rambo Aplasca firing as if he were in a shooting range.
Cayetano blamed the minority for the “brazen” attack and slammed Sotto for not stopping the “assault,” only that the latter no longer exercised the prerogatives of a Senate leader. Too young to suffer dementia, Cayetano is still guilty of suddenly being sickened by selective amnesia. He was the Senate President when the middle game started and became the reason why de la Rosa had to secure himself. To explain the “escape,” a dirty word to Cayetano, he explained that there was no arrest warrant for his ward. There is one and the ICC confirmed it, only for Cayetano not to hear it as he suffered **tinnitus, selective we presume. The new Senate President has been spinning lies after lies as soon as he succeeded in kicking out Sotto. Only that his reputation preceded him. He sounds like the loudest empty can hereabouts, like the empty can that Ernest Hemingway kicks down the road.
As the late Jimi Hendrix once said, “knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” Cayetano is dishing out plenty of information that he thinks would convince everyone that he is under attack and that another coup is afoot. “Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority,” the psychologist Alfred Adler warned. No one is interested in his being the target of an ouster plot. He just kicked out a colleague by cajoling, wooing and threatening senators. Why should the people be concerned about the internal workings of parliamentary competitions for power? Yet, Cayetano is clearly hallucinating, to the extent of slamming all those who doubt him. He declares, without batting an eyelash, that God doesn’t doubt him. There you go, dapat sa patalim siya kumapit at hindi sa Maykapal, sa mga Diwata, mga duwende, at alitaptap sa Taguig.
If Legarda’s photo was stricken off the wall of empowered women at Assumption Convent, her alma mater, the strident criticisms lodged against her by the University of the Philippines Broadcasting Association should hit her like a lightning rod. The association simply asked her to reread the commitment to truth, fealty to the interest of the greatest number and never fulminate against facts, especially as regards the impeachment of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, the nightmare of Davao City, who has been weighed and found wanting. Protecting her does not only go against the values instilled among professional broadcasters and journalists worth their salt. It harks back to the days of Belshazzar, when “mene mene tekel upharsin” (“the handwriting on the wall”) appeared on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace. Like Belshazzar, Cayetano has been weighed, found wanting and his days are numbered. Reread Daniel. #
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WORDS OF THE DAY
Pooh-bah – a pompous, self-important person holding multiple official positions or wielding significant bureaucratic power.
Tinnitus – perceiving sounds in your ears or head when no external source is present.
