The Senate’s leadership posts were swept clean on Wednesday, June 3, when 12 senators voted during the plenary session to declare every position in the chamber vacant.
That vote, according to the newly formed 12-member majority bloc, ended Alan Peter Cayetano’s run as Senate President. The post now sits empty.
The senators present grounded their authority to act on a quorum drawn from a 22-member base, leaning on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Avelino v. Cuenco. With that quorum recognized, they carried a motion stripping all leadership roles — the presidency included — of their occupants, closing out the chamber’s existing leadership.
The bloc was explicit that vacating the posts is not the same as filling them. “Hindi pa lamang naihahalal si Sen. Win Gatchalian bilang bagong Senate President dahil kailangan pa ng 13 boto sa ilalim ng Konstitusyon,” the statement read, noting the constitutional requirement of 13 votes before a new Senate President can be seated.
What the group insisted mattered was the break itself. “Pero ito ang malinaw at mahalaga ngayon: bakante na ang lahat ng posisyon, tapos na ang dating liderato at dapat magpatuloy ang trabaho ng Senado para sa taumbayan,” it added.
Gatchalian, for his part, ran Wednesday’s proceedings, presiding over the session before bringing it to a close sine die.
