May 11, 2026 will always be remembered as the day the venerable institution went down to the pits, something one never imagined in the country’s political history.
That was the day Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano brought out Sen. Bato Dela Rosa, who had been in hiding for six months, to have the number needed for him to wrest the senate presidency from Sen. Tito Sotto. The higher objective was to thwart efforts to convict Vice President Sara Duterte in the impeachment trial that the Senate should convene after the House of Representatives also on May 11, in a 255 against 215 vote, impeached the second highest official of the land for misuse of P125 million confidential funds and P7 billion in unliquidated cash advances and submitting questionable liquidation documents when she was education secretary, threatening to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and former House speaker Martin Romualdez, and accumulating unexplained wealth.
Cayetano succeeded in installing himself as the new Senate president. However, there was a problem with Dela Rosa when National Bureau of Investigation agents showed up with a warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court for the charge of crimes against humanity for his role in former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs where at least 20,000 people were killed.
Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV was with the NBI agents to accept Dela Rosa’s earlier dare to arrest him personally.
That’s when “shit happened”.
(*“Shit happens” is the infamous reaction of then PNP chief Bato dela Rosa when informed that a three-year old child, Myka Ulpina, was fatally shot in a police anti-drug operation in July 2019.)
Photos and video by Bullit Marquez for VERA Files
