The man is a social risk. Give him public office, power and political influence. He will not see these as instruments for public administration. He will see public service only as a front to shift to the gratification of ego. In time he will silence dissent and consolidate absolute power.
In the midterm elections of 2019, Alan Peter Cayetano was running for a congressional seat. He was also eyeing something else. He wanted to be House Speaker. He asked for the blessings of Rodrigo Duterte. But Duterte intimated that Lord Alan Velasco of Marinduque asked for the same presidential blessings too.
When both emerged victorious, Duterte gave his blessings to both. In July, he announced a Cayetano-Velasco term-sharing agreement. Cayetano will sit as Speaker for 15 months following which Velasco will take over for 21 months.
When Cayetano’s 15 months were over in October 2020, all hell broke loose instead. The House was turned into his personal battlefield.
First, he delayed the pre-agreed term sharing by abruptly suspending the House sessions. The House was by then in deliberations of the 2021 national budget.
Second, he sprung a surprise by moving to approve the budget even if it was only on second reading. He railroaded it to prevent the impression that he held the budget hostage.
Third, using feeble attempts to project that he was more popular than Velasco, his allies held a rally in the plenary. He claimed his allies wanted him to stay because of “high approval ratings.”
Fourth, he then suspended the House sessions until mid-November. His 15 months of the agreement was supposed to be up by October.
Fifth, Cayetano then ordered the plenary hall to be padlocked. Yes, padlocked, bolted, chained.
If you think that last week’s banging of “the senate was under attack” was his most ballistic, padlocking the House plenary hall was. Nobody had done that in Filipino history but the conjugal dictators Ferdinand and Imelda of world ignominy.
Sixth, the padlocking wasn’t the only caprice he showed as if he owned the Batasan building. He ordered the power grid to be shut down. He also ordered that the WiFi be disabled. It was all an attempt to block the Velasco camp from taking over.
At this point, understand the primal and primitive Alan Peter Cayetano: a child in violent tantrums who didn’t care if the public was looking at his rampage. He was running amok like in a juramentado.
Seventh, when Velasco’s allies convened a separate session to elect Velasco as the new Speaker on October 12, Cayetano dismissed it as fake. It was getting clearer by his every error what he was up to – gratify his narcissistic ego. He then released manifestos signed by lawmakers backing his continued speakership.
Eighth, Cayetano offered to resign on the House floor. If was a mere performative act. It was actually a ruse for a vote of confidence. Like Alan Peter clockwork, his allies then voted to reject his resignation, among them party list representative Mike Defensor.
Cayetano is never lacking in content creation of the sham.
Meantime, Duterte tried to intervene. He had to because the rift was becoming a major crack in his administration. Duterte, himself not an exemplar of honor, said publicly, “Cayetano does not want to honor it.”
Devoid of the facilities of a plenary hall, the Velasco camp that numbered 186 lawmakers held a remote session at Celebrity Sports Plaza and elected him as the new Speaker. The headcount finally broke Cayetano’s grip on his power fantasia. Rufus Rodriguez of Cagayan de Oro said the rule on the mace was not absolute.
The man who coveted being Speaker because he saw it as a stepping stone to his burning desire to be president resigned because there was no other logical thing for him to do.
If all these sound familiar from the skullduggery we saw at the Senate last week, we must ponder on it no more. Alan Peter Cayetano is a dangerous man, a very sick man.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
