by Lino Sumaylo
Many Filipinos now find themselves asking which side, if any, deserves their faith in the continuing struggle within the Philippine Senate. On one side stands the Cayetano-led majority; on the other, the Gatchalian-led majority. Each camp speaks in the language of law, procedure, and principle. Each insists it is right. Yet for the ordinary citizen, this contest offers little clarity and even less consolation. It leaves only the fatigue that comes when public institutions seem unable to govern themselves while the burdens of daily life grow heavier outside their halls. We are told that the Executive cannot intervene because the Senate is an independent body. We are also told that the Supreme Court must remain apart because the controversy presents a political question better left to Congress itself.
And yet one cannot help but ask whether such restraint remains fidelity to constitutional design, or has become another refuge from the duty to decide. The broad use of the political question doctrine once associated with Javellana v. Executive Secretary was, after all, significantly narrowed by the 1987 Constitution, which expressly empowered the courts to determine whether any branch or instrumentality of government has committed grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.
If this controversy is allowed to linger, the public will be driven toward a harder question: what becomes of an institution that cannot rise above its own internal fracture to attend to the needs of the nation? There comes a point when citizens, already worn down by hardship, can no longer be asked to endure the spectacle of official paralysis. When an institution demands more of the people’s patience than it returns in public good, doubt gathers around its purpose. That doubt is not merely emotional; it reaches the constitutional imagination itself.
Can we just abolish the Senate? The sober answer is that the Senate is not a body the Executive may abolish by mere assertion of residual power. It is a constitutional institution, created by the 1987 Constitution as one half of a bicameral Congress. If it is ever to be abolished, that change must come not from unilateral presidential action but from constitutional amendment or revision in the manner the Constitution provides. Still, legal limits do not absolve political actors of responsibility. The Constitution may mark the boundaries of power, but it does not excuse the wasting of public trust within those boundaries. What Filipinos need now is not another ritual of institutional vanity but the quiet seriousness of legislative work. The more than 160 measures approved by the House await attention not as abstractions on paper, but as possible answers to inflation, job scarcity, inadequate hospital supplies, and the persistence of poverty.
The deeper question, then, may not lie in the fate of the Senate alone, but in the habits of mind that shape our public life. Can Filipinos rise above devotion to political idols and recover a steadier loyalty to country? Until that happens, our institutions will remain captive not only to struggles for power at the top, but also to the culture of attachment that allows those struggles to endure.
In the end, the crisis before us may be less a failure of structure than a failure of civic memory: we forget too easily that public office was never meant to be a stage for loyalty to persons, but a trust held for the nation.
(Editor’s note about the author: For more than 30 years, he has been serving as a government employee, taking on multiple roles that have shaped both his career and perspective. He has worn many hats over the decades: Budget Officer, Accountant, Human Resource Officer, Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Officer, and Traffic Officer. Each position demanded a different lens, from balancing public funds and keeping records straight, to managing people, protecting the environment, and maintaining order on the streets. Along the way, he pursued his Juris Doctor degree, driven by a belief that law and governance should serve the public with both clarity and compassion. His love for writing has long been cherished by those who have read his articles.)
