Black barong and dark apparel replaced the usual ceremonial dress among several opposition figures at the Senate on Monday, July 27, 2026, as a small cluster of lawmakers signaled they would have no part in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fifth State of the Nation Address later that afternoon.
Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano is among those skipping the address at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City. He has said he intends to follow the speech from a television set rather than take a seat in the hall, casting the choice as a form of protest.
The grievance driving the walkout centers on how members of their bloc have been treated in the courts. Senator Imee Marcos, speaking to reporters in an ambush interview, put it plainly: “Masama ang loob namin dahil pinakukulong, kinakasuhan ang minority.” She told the press she could not bring herself to attend, and identified Loren Legarda, Cayetano, and Robin Padilla as others expected to be absent, adding of the coordination, per Philstar, “Nagtanungan lang kami ngayon eh.”
The detentions behind that complaint are concrete. Philstar reported that Senator Jinggoy Estrada has been held in Quezon City since June over plunder allegations linked to the flood control controversy, while Senator Ronald dela Rosa has not been seen publicly since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant tied to the Duterte-era drug war.
Cayetano’s decision to stay away lands only days after he took a markedly different public tone. In a Facebook livestream on the eve of the address, Philstar reported, he pressed even Marcos’s opponents to tune in, arguing the speech functions as the government’s account of national conditions and a basis for informed debate.
The dress-code protest was visible well before the President took the podium. Cayetano appeared at the opening of the 20th Congress’s second regular session in a black long-sleeved barong Tagalog, according to the Inquirer, with Pia Cayetano and Legarda likewise turning up in black.
Whether the absences would carry into any future floor business remained an open question. A University of the Philippines constitutional law scholar, Paolo Tamase, had earlier cautioned the minority against sitting out a possible special session, warning to the Inquirer that abstaining could effectively surrender chamber control to the majority bloc now led by Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian.
