Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano told the public Wednesday that he sees no reason to step down voluntarily, framing the question of his tenure as a simple matter of arithmetic on the chamber floor.
Speaking in Filipino during a Facebook livestream, he argued that a resignation would be beside the point once his opponents assemble enough numbers to remove him. “I’ll repeat this. If there are 13 votes, it automatically means I don’t need to resign. It’s yours,” he said.
That threshold of 13 is the same figure that put him in the post. Cayetano took over leadership of the Senate on May 11 with the backing of 13 colleagues, displacing Sen. Vicente “Tito” Sotto III.
The math has since turned against his faction. Two of the senators who supported him are no longer able to vote from the floor: Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, detained at a Quezon City jail in connection with the flood control projects controversy, and Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, sought by the International Criminal Court over his part in the prior administration’s anti-drug campaign. Their absence pares the Cayetano camp down to 11 senators — a dead heat with the minority’s own 11.
The standoff hardened after Estrada was taken into custody Monday, when Cayetano’s majority began skipping sessions altogether. Sotto’s minority responded by demanding that Cayetano vacate the presidency.
Even as he brushed off that demand, Cayetano signaled he is not clinging to the position. He described his role in transitional terms, suggesting his only remaining task may be to see pending hearings convened. “In fact, I’m just looking at it day by day, week by week, that these hearings push through and get started. Maybe that’s all my job is,” he said in Filipino. “I would be more than content to leave the day that God uses people to tell me that we already have someone chosen to lead us.”
He also said he had encouraged his bloc to consider their own ambitions for the post. “I also told the twelve: ‘Make each one of us here a candidate. Who among you also wants to serve our country? But my mission right now is for the truth to come out,” he added.
