Senate of the damned
By Antonio Contreras
On the Contrary
The Manila Times
May 19, 2026
THERE was a time when becoming a senator of the Republic meant something.
The Senate used to be imagined as the chamber of statesmen, the institutional sanctuary where intellect, gravitas and historical perspective converged to temper the noise of politics. It was supposed to be the “upper house,” elevated not merely by constitutional design, but by the quality of those who occupied it.
This was the chamber of Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Tañada, Jovito Salonga, Arturo Tolentino, Aquilino Pimentel and Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Whatever one’s political disagreements with them, these were people whose speeches could wound, persuade, illuminate and terrify all at once. They could debate constitutional law without cue cards. They could interrogate policy without reducing governance into viral soundbites. They understood that public office was not merely visibility, but responsibility.
Today, the Senate resembles a casting call for political reality television.
Instead of statesmen, we have performers. Instead of constitutional guardians, we have influencers with immunity. Instead of deliberation, we have spectacle. The Senate has degenerated into a national coliseum where celebrity, name recall, inherited political machinery and algorithmic popularity matter more than competence, intellectual depth, or moral seriousness.
The current Senate includes Robin Padilla, whose legislative interventions often sound like improvised monologues from a badly written action film; Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa, who has debased the Senate by becoming literally a fugitive in hiding; Rodante Marcoleta, whose political persona thrives on performative outrage and conspiracy-flavored populism; Alan Peter Cayetano, the eternal political shape-shifter whose convictions seem permanently available for lease; and Imee Marcos, whose historical revisionism walks hand in hand with aristocratic entitlement.
The tragedy is not merely that these individuals won. The deeper tragedy is that the institutional design of the Senate itself actively encourages this degeneration.
A nationally elected Senate rewards celebrity over substance.
A Senate elected by an entire country of over a hundred million people naturally advantages movie stars, political dynasties, billionaires, social media personalities and demagogues with massive machinery or pre-existing fame. It is not a chamber designed for careful legislative selection. It is a nationwide popularity contest masquerading as constitutional refinement.
The result is predictable.
Candidates spend hundreds of millions to cultivate visibility, not competence. Public discourse collapses into jingles, memes, dance numbers, endorsements and personality cults. Legislative elections become indistinguishable from entertainment marketing campaigns.
And because senators derive legitimacy from a national constituency, many begin imagining themselves as untouchable political gods. Their egos inflate beyond institutional accountability. Some start behaving less like lawmakers and more like sovereign warlords of public opinion.
The recent political crisis surrounding the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte exposed this decay with painful clarity.
While the House of Representatives, long mocked as the supposedly inferior “lower house,” managed to gather the courage to transmit the impeachment complaint despite enormous political pressure, the Senate descended into maneuvering, hesitation, procedural gamesmanship and factional intrigue.
Two hundred fifty-seven members of the House stood their ground amid threats from the Duterte political machine, online intimidation campaigns, and the bullying atmosphere generated by pro-Duterte forces. Whatever one thinks of individual congressmen, the institution itself demonstrated collective political resolve.
The Senate, meanwhile, looked like a hostage situation disguised as constitutional procedure.
Instead of projecting institutional dignity, it projected fear, opportunism and transactional survivalism. The chamber increasingly appeared controlled by a cabal of senators more concerned with political preservation and alliance management than constitutional duty.
And this is precisely why public trust in the Senate has collapsed.
The recent plunge in its approval and trust ratings is not accidental. Filipinos are beginning to recognize what the Senate has become: not a stabilizing institution, but a destabilizing one. Not a guardian of democracy, but a bottleneck vulnerable to personality cults, dynastic bargaining and elite hostage-taking.
Worse, the Senate now actively undermines democratic accountability.
A small number of nationally elected politicians can stall, dilute, weaponize, or sabotage processes supported by broader institutional consensus. The concentration of power within 24 oversized egos creates paralysis at moments requiring constitutional clarity.
The impeachment controversy demonstrated another disturbing reality: Senators increasingly behave as though they are above the institutions they serve. Some speak as if they are monarchs granting favors to the Constitution rather than public officials bound by it.
This culture is corrosive.
It infects even those who once appeared respectable. Watching Loren Legarda evolve into a political butterfly perpetually fluttering toward whichever configuration preserves relevance is itself a tragic commentary on the institutional environment of the Senate. The chamber does not merely accommodate opportunism. It cultivates it.
Defenders of the Senate argue that abolishing it would weaken checks and balances. But one must ask: What exactly is the Senate checking today?
It no longer reliably checks executive abuse.
It no longer guarantees higher legislative quality.
It no longer elevates national discourse.
It no longer protects institutional integrity.
Instead, it often functions as a theater of vanity where hearings become performance art, investigations become extortionary spectacles, and constitutional responsibilities become subordinate to political branding.
The irony is brutal. The House of Representatives, historically caricatured as parochial and transactional because of district politics, now appears comparatively more grounded, more accountable, and at times more institutionally serious than the Senate. Representatives at least face geographically concentrated constituencies who directly experience the consequences of governance failures. Senators, insulated by nationwide campaigns and celebrity politics, can survive almost entirely on mythology and visibility.
Perhaps the real constitutional anachronism is not unicameralism, but the fantasy that a nationally elected aristocratic chamber still produces aristocrats of intellect and statesmanship.
It no longer does. What it produces are political celebrities with inflated self-importance and weak accountability structures. The Senate has become a monument to democratic distortion: expensive, ego-driven, personality-centered and structurally vulnerable to populist capture.
And increasingly, Filipinos are noticing.
The falling trust ratings are not merely reactions to one controversy. They are symptoms of a deeper exhaustion with institutional theater. People are beginning to ask a once-unthinkable question: If the Senate no longer performs the function it was created for, why should it continue to exist?
That question no longer sounds radical.
It sounds overdue.
Antonio Contreras is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and vice chairman of the board of state-run PTVNI.
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