CHICKENPIE.The Senate convenes at 2pm. By 2:15, three group chats have already renamed it "Isang Pambansang Contravida."
Nobody meant for this to become appointment viewing. It just did. The teleserye got bumped to a later slot. This is the teleserye now — same courtroom-drama pacing, same commercial breaks, same aunties texting "TARA PANOORIN" like it's a wedding.
Senators deliver lines they clearly rehearsed in a mirror somewhere. Lawyers pause mid-sentence for a laugh track that never comes. Somewhere, a production assistant is timing this for pacing — except the production assistant is democracy, and democracy has never once hit a deadline.
Here's the part that stings: we're not watching because we trust the outcome. We're watching because we've made peace with not trusting it, and there's a strange comfort in watching the machine grind anyway. Stamina, remember. Not outrage.
The chismis angle writes itself. Every senator's facial expression becomes a meme before the gavel lands twice. Somebody's sipping coffee like it's popcorn. Somebody's checking their phone mid-testimony. We used to clutch pearls at that. Now we screenshot it.
What nobody's saying out loud: this is also, unfortunately, working. People who couldn't name three senators in January can now quote committee procedure. That's not nothing. A country learning its own government by accident, live, on a Tuesday afternoon, is still a country learning.
Doesn't mean we have to be solemn about it.
The trial will end. Someone will win the vote count and lose the group chat. The teleserye will get its slot back. Somewhere, a chicken in the crowd will still be watching quietly, unbothered, because chickens don't care who gets impeached.
That's the real committee hearing. The one with better ratings.
