The Senate is Duterte’s worst casualty
How the Senate, once the breeding ground of future presidents, is now a shadow of its former self.
The recent spate of exchanges between the Senate and President Duterte has finally exposed what the President has been doing to them since 2016 — coopting the institution’s legitimacy.
One may argue that once upon a time, the Senate and the President were in the best terms when there were only 6 in the minority before 2019 and 4 after, with one of them currently in jail. However, that was all part of the plan.
Duterte had to do two things: first, he depoliticized the Senate as a political institution; second, he coopted the Senate’s legitimacy. Overall, these did not only affect the Senate as a legitimate political actor but most importantly, it took away their one and only realistic political purpose in Philippine politics: being a springboard to the Presidency.
A Brief Electoral History of the Senate and the Presidency
The Senate was always known to have been the breeding ground of future presidents. 10 out of 16 President of the Philippines have served in the Senate prior to becoming President. In the post-EDSA era, Presidents Estrada, Arroyo, and Aquino were all once Senators before becoming VP or President.
In 2016, you would notice how they tried to revive the old tradition of Senate, VP, then President when 5 out of 6 VP candidates were Senators. The presidential race only featured 2 Senators.
Today, we’re set to see only 2 or 3 Senators in the race: Lacson, Pacquiao, and Go (if he does push through). And unlike before where Senators would poll significantly (a Senator would at least be a frontrunner once in pre-filing surveys), we live in an era where you have a new breed of politicians taking the lead: Mayors.
So what happened to Senators being the heirs-apparent to the presidency?
An Institutional View of the Senate and the Presidency
One of the fundamental readings taught to us in Political Science is Juan Linz’s Perils of Presidentialism which argues that in presidential systems where a Senate exists, the Senate and the President would compete for legitimacy since their mandates are similar — both institution affect the whole of the nation and are not particularistic as single-constituency assemblies.
In the Philippines, we exacerbate this framework of competing legitimacy by our electoral system. Senators are elected by the nation-at-large, meaning they are voted just like presidents. The logical outcome of this is that every Senator has an equal claim to the president’s constituency, sometimes even greater than the president’s. Take for example Frank Drilon who was elected with 18 million votes. He along with Senators Villanueva, Sotto, Lacson, and Gordon, garnered more votes than Rodrigo Duterte’s 16.6 million.
The scenario we see today where Gordon, Lacson, and Sotto are emboldened to take the President head on, is a symptom of Linz’s prognosis. But I will be arguing how these efforts are now too late in the game.
Populism’s Role in Depoliticizing the Senate
Francisco Panizza’s Populism and the Mirror of Democracy introduced the idea that populism intends to depoliticize the political and hyperpoliticize social relations, which are less political during non-populist times. The point here is that populist politics legitimizes a collective id which represents our deepest collective desires. Take for example how Duterte is the candidate of the promdi middle class against the NCR’s big four-educated elite. As he puts it, the political becomes personal.
By depoliticizing the political, Panizza emphasized how populist leaders would discredit the usual horizontal accountability of institutions (i.e. the three branches of government, horizontally checking one another as co-equals) and differentiate themselves from the political establishment by employing vertical accountability — that is, that the leader is accountable to the people alone as their mandated champion. Sounds familiar?
One of the aspects of Duterte’s populist project was to discredit an already-weakening Senate in the 2010s. This was an era where congressional pork was abolished, thereby removing a Senator’s ability to create executive-level projects such as relief operations, health caravans, and other forms of transfers. There was also the imprisonment of Enrile, Revilla, and Estrada which proved the vulnerability of the institution. People were also visibly sick and tired of Senate hearings which never produced instant results for the frustrated populace. I bet you’ve heard someone say bakit wala pang nakukulong sa mga Senate hearing na yan when constitutionally, Senators cannot convict people for crimes.
These were symptomatic already of a sentiment which Duterte was ready to exploit. But he knows he must not lay down his cards all at once. Instead, he chose to depoliticize the Senate by a classic carrot and stick strategy. Duterte will reward all those who will join his supermajority and will punish those who won’t. His best demonstration was the imprisonment of De Lima. Eventually, he had to make some concessions such as abdicating the Senate to Tito Sotto instead of Pimentel, who was more of his lackey during those days. He had to keep up with this for three years because he entered with no Senators but Pacquiao and Pimentel as his loyal henchmen.
Now recall that the Senate and the President play a game of competing legitimacies.
The 2019 elections was a clue to how he would treat the institution. He left the coalition-building to his daughter by building the HNP, but his main machinery, PDP-Laban, fielded only five candidates who were unquestionably loyal to him. 4 out of 5 won. By 2019 to sometime in 2021, he had Bong Go, Bato, Pimentel, Tolentino, and Pacquiao as his loyal henchmen.
This meant that his intention was to fill the Senate with people loyal to him so that he can easily win the game of competing legitimacies. That’s why I’m suspicious of the 2022 PDP-Laban Cusi wing Senate lineup. They may not be very strong candidates, polling-wise, but most have one thing in common: they are unquestionably loyal to the President. Tugade, Panelo, Roque, Bello, Belgica, and Marcoleta are vying to add to Go, Tolentino, and Bato as his loyalists in the Senate.
His main goal is to fill the Senate with loyalists, like how a Mayor would want a city council that is loyal to him. Now to his next move.
Coopting the Senate’s Legitimacy
He is now at a point when Senators are finally rebelling against him as a signifier of the President’s supposed lame duck period. This has pushed him to make his next move: if the carrot no longer works, then you must beat the donkey to death.
We now look into his rhetoric and how it parallels the pre-2016 frustrations on the Senate.
Duterte has been exploiting the inability of Senators to perform prosecutorial functions by attacking the heart of checks-and-balances: congressional oversight. Read this quote of his in one of his public rants:
“Pakinggan mo iyong ibang senador diyan, mayroon talagang masabi. After investigation, one or two or three days in hearing wala na, walang rekomendasyon, walang dinemanda, walang na-preso. Puro postura lang.”
This is evidence of his attempt at paralleling the common public misconceptions of senatorial work. Senators make laws and ensure they are properly executed through oversight, but in the age of populism and the desire for instant results, this is an overlooked job. People no longer appreciate landmark legislation. Imagine how we voted out the authors of the Free Tuition Law and Universal Healthcare Act in 2019. That’s how bad the situation has become.
So when the standard is now executive work, where do Senators compensate for the lack thereof? Normally, they would use their discretionary funds to make up by conducting non-programmatic transfers to the public such as scholarships and health assistance funds. But this has been significantly weakened after the outlawing of the PDAF in 2013.
Hence, Duterte has the Senate on checkmate. They are left without a proper weapon against the President unless they find a smoking gun against him in this current series of hearings against his cabinet.
Affecting Electoral Outcomes
2016 was the death of politics as usual. This is why a recurring theme in my articles is that Duterte’s rise has changed the political landscape so significantly that the people’s imagination of a leader has become so different from the Aquino years. This is why a change in strategy is so much needed. There will be no gains in defending a previous status quo. We can only win if we coopt the values owned by those in power today.
By depoliticizing the Senate and coopting their legitimacy, Duterte was able to destroy the institution’s ability to produce future presidents. They can no longer grandstand in hearings because of its diminished public appeal and can no longer enact non-programmatic, pa-pogi tactics due to the lack of appropriated funds under their discretion. It has become institutionally difficult to launch a presidential bid from the Senate.
This is why Mayoral candidates are appealing to voters today. They are mini-presidents of their own localities and when one delivers well and provides a blueprint to progress in their own city, people easily fall for that bait. That’s why the Makati, Davao, and now, Manila formulas will always be so irresistible to people.
In a post-Duterte era, I surmise we cannot expect a Senator becoming President anytime soon. Not in this context and not in their institutional position. Today, it is a mere shadow of what it once was. The same tactics of before won’t work against a powerful demagogue. Acknowledgment is the first step to healing.
