CHICKENPIETwo people are currently Senate president. One issued a memo saying to keep the Senate open. The other issued a memo saying work from home. Both memos went out the same afternoon.
This is how constitutional crises look in the Philippines — not tanks, not proclamations. Conflicting Google Workspace notifications.
The sequence is clean in the way a car crash is clean once you've watched the replay. Senator Alan Peter Cayetano's bloc stopped attending sessions. While they were gone, twelve senators showed up, declared quorum, and reorganized the chamber. Cayetano says you need thirteen for that. His opponents cite the Avelino v. Cuenco doctrine, 1949, which says twelve is fine. The 1949 case was decided. This one, seventy-seven years later, is not.
So now there are two Senate presidents, one Supreme Court petition, and one Senate website that quietly removed a name from a header file sometime between last Tuesday and this morning.
The Supreme Court petition was not filed by a senator. It was not filed by a high-powered constitutional lawyer in a freshly pressed barong. It was filed by a private school teacher. A classroom teacher knocked on the Supreme Court's door and said: can someone please make the Senate agree on its own meeting rules?
That sentence contains the entire diagnosis of Philippine democratic dysfunction.
The institution whose function is to write the rules for this country cannot run its own meetings. Cayetano says thirteen. Gatchalian says twelve. The 1949 case says twelve. The classroom teacher is waiting for someone to add it up. In the meantime, senators receive two memos for every decision and apparently choose which one to follow based on seating proximity and lunch plans.
Cayetano says he is still president. Gatchalian exercises the functions. The Supreme Court has been asked to settle it.
The classroom teacher is still waiting. So is the country.
