A day of infamy: Marcos’ Machiavellian takeover of the Senate

JUNE 17, 2026, will be remembered as a day of infamy in our political history: the moment when the sitting president effectively seized control of a key pillar of the Republic — the Senate — with Sen. Joel Villanueva’s capitulation.

Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano reported that Villanueva had confided that the graft charges against him involving the flood control scam would be accelerated, even elevated to a plunder charge that allows no bail, if he did not cooperate with Malacañang. Most Filipinos also believed that it was a similar threat that pushed Sen. Francis Escudero to join the Marcos bloc last June 3.

The capture of the upper chamber by Malacañang has been executed through a proxy — now Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian, whose family conglomerate depends on the president’s grace for its very survival.

It is also a day of shame, as those who had been fulminating against dictatorship for four decades supported the dictator’s son moving to install his modern version of authoritarian rule: the Left, the Pinks or the Leni Robredo mob, of course the Yellows, whose four senators could have easily stopped Marcos, and the communists who have infiltrated Congress. Include there the mainstream media.

All of the broadsheets were critical of Cayetano during the fray, and reported Gatchalian’s takeover as a mere contest between two factions in the Senate, when the truth was that it was the idealistic, independent bloc’s struggle to resist a Marcos-controlled Senate. The self-appointed models of journalistic excellence — Rappler and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism — echoed mainstream media’s narrative, because their United States backers abhor Sara as much as her father.

Takeover

The sudden defenestration of Senator Cayetano and the installation of Gatchalian as Senate president is nothing less than a hostile takeover of the institution that was supposed to be the great balancer of our democracy. The Senate was designed as a deliberative body of 24 independent “republics,” a check on executive overreach. Today, it has been reduced to an annex of the Palace.

Let us strip away the polite parliamentary fiction. The executive branch midwifed this coup. The Malacañang bloc attained a quorum after Escudero appeared on the floor on June 3, and Villanueva on June 17. Everyone knew both were threatened by Malacañang operators that their graft cases would be accelerated and even elevated to plunder charges that allow no bail if they didn’t follow Marcos’ wishes.

Malacañang barely bothered to hide its hand. Within hours, the Presidential Communications Office, through Undersecretary Claire Castro, was on air declaring that what happened in the Senate was “naaayon sa batas at rule of law,” and that the Palace would recognize no one but Gatchalian as the legitimate leader of the chamber.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. then sealed the arrangement in the most public way possible — by formally acknowledging “Senate President Pro Temp[ore] Sherwin Gatchalian” as Senate leader during his Independence Day speech, pointedly snubbing Cayetano’s rival claim. In a system where symbolism matters, that was the coronation.

Why Gatchalian? Because no one else among the Malacañang minions in the Senate was the heir-apparent of his family’s conglomerate that is entangled in billion‑peso vulnerabilities that only the Palace can resolve.

The first chain around Gatchalian’s neck is the P34.3‑billion Manila Bay reclamation project of the Gatchalian family’s Waterfront Manila Premier Development Inc. In August 2023, Marcos ordered the indefinite suspension of 22 reclamation projects in Manila Bay, citing environmental risks, flooding impacts and the need for a cumulative impact assessment by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The move also came after the US raised the alarm over the alleged involvement of a Chinese state‑owned firm in at least one project near its embassy — precisely the corridor where the Gatchalians wanted to build their glittering central business district and casino complex.

Suspended

Nearly three years later, those projects remain suspended. The power to lift that freeze rests squarely in the hands of the executive. With one signature, Marcos can either resurrect the Gatchalian family’s multibillion‑peso dream or bury it permanently under the waters of the bay.

Can a man whose family stands to lose tens of billions if the president frowns upon it truly exercise independent legislative oversight? Can he honestly scrutinize the administration’s budget, or question its China and US policies, when his clan’s flagship project literally sits on presidential sufferance?

But the reclamation limbo is only the first of the sword of Damocles hanging over the new Senate president. The Gatchalian empire is also staring down the barrel of an execution order arising way back from the Estrada plunder saga.

The family owes the government roughly P1.6 billion tied to a controversial 2000 loan from the notorious “Jose Velarde” bank account secretly owned by ousted president Joseph Estrada. The Supreme Court in 2023 ordered the Gatchalian conglomerate to repay P500 million (P1.6 billion plus interest in today’s money) or surrender about 20 percent of Waterfront Philippines Inc. — some 450 million shares — to the State as part of the recovery of Estrada’s ill‑gotten wealth. The Sandiganbayan’s sheriff services have the mandate to enforce this. But who ultimately influences the zeal, timing and aggressiveness of the State’s collection efforts? In the real world, that is never divorced from the wishes of the executive.

What should worry us about Sherwin — the patriarch William’s CEO before he went to politics — is that his conglomerate has had a predilection for raising profits through deals with government entities. I explained in last Monday’s column how it rid itself of its massively losing bank by getting the Local Waterworks and Utility Authority (LWUA) to buy its ailing thrift bank — which in the end cost this poor state entity to lose P1.4 billion in taxpayer’s money. (Two top LWUA officials have been convicted of graft over this case, but not the Gatchalians as the prosecution could not get the two to allege that they had been bribed to approve the sale).

SSS

Still another case: Way back in 1999, instead of borrowing from commercial banks, the conglomerate controversially got the Social Security System (SSS) to lend it P375 million (P1 billion in today’s money), which by itself was anomalous, a court ruled later, as its charter didn’t allow such loans to a private entity. The group defaulted on the loan in 2003 with P605 million obligations (i.e., including interest).

But then the group’s tactic has been to contest the obligations in court, as was the case with the Jose Velarde loan. Perhaps waiting for an administration friendly to it to intervene? The SSS case was tied down in litigation for 26 years and finally reached the Supreme Court. One of the Gatchalian defense’s arguments for refusing payment was diabolical: they claimed the loan was null and void since the two SSS officials who signed the loan documents had no authority to do so. The Supreme Court accepted that weird defense and issued a complicated order in 2023 for the settlement of the dispute. Still though, the Gatchalians had to pay SSS an estimated P1.3 billion.

Sherwin will insist — as he has done in public — that he has no hand in his father’s business and that corporate issues are “separate” from his legislative duties.

Tell that to the Marines. In the Philippine context, the fortunes of the political heir and the corporate patriarch are conjoined twins. The son’s political clout shields the father’s assets, while the father’s assets bankroll the son’s ambitions.

By elevating Gatchalian to the Senate presidency, Marcos has secured not an ally, but a puppet. Gatchalian cannot afford to cross the president. If he does not comply with Malacañang’s wishes, or if he dares to show independence on sensitive geopolitical issues, retaliation is ready at hand: the Manila Bay suspension can be made permanent, and the sheriff can be unleashed with sudden enthusiasm on the family’s Waterfront shares. Never before has the Senate had a president who was a member of a business group whose fate depends on the decisions of the president of the Republic.

Reasons

Marcos had to rush his plot to control the Senate for two reasons. First, control of the Senate, particularly its Blue Ribbon Committee, is crucial to dismiss the allegations by 18 former soldiers that not only did most of his allies receive tens of millions of pesos of graft money through former deputy speaker Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co: he, his wife and his congressman son themselves received a billion pesos.

Second, the chamber is about to sit as an impeachment court to try Vice President Sara Duterte, now his archenemy and a shoo-in for the presidency in 2028. Marcos’ control of the Senate could be crucial in the trial itself as the Senate president controls the calendar, the recognition of motions, the pace of hearings and the evidence allowed. His successful move, through intimidation, to get 13 senators to elect Gatchalian as president, is also a dry run to see if he can get the 16 votes required to convict Sara. The Senate may even issue rules to reduce to just 14 the required number of senators needed to convict.

This episode shows that Marcos needs only two more senators to go to his side to take out Sara. But then he may be in for a surprise if these egoistic senators revolt over the detestable ways he has used to control the Senate.

This is the real tragedy of this day of infamy. The Constitution intended the Senate to be a bulwark against executive excess, a forum where even presidents had to plead their case before equals. Instead, through the cold exploitation of one family’s corporate vulnerabilities and the opportunism of “values‑driven” Pink and Yellow politicians, the chamber has been turned into Marcos’ rubber stamp.

A co‑equal branch of government became, in substance, just another department under the Office of the President. Its next agenda is to change the Constitution to extend Marcos’ rule one way or another.

---

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

X: @bobitiglao

Website: www.rigobertotiglao.com

The post A day of infamy: Marcos’ Machiavellian takeover of the Senate first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.

A day of infamy: Marcos’ Machiavellian takeover of the Senate
Source: Breaking News PH