Fear of becoming a target for online critics is keeping wavering senators from joining the Sherwin Gatchalian-led majority, even as the group works to expand its ranks beyond the current 12.
Senator Erwin Tulfo laid out the situation in a DZRH interview on Monday, June 15, saying the bloc could realistically climb to 15 seats if ongoing recruitment efforts succeed. Two senators in particular remain in play. “There are two more, one male, one female, if we can convince them,” Tulfo said, declining to name them. He described the courtship as informal and personal: “The talks we have as friends are ongoing — we’ve had dinner, we ate out to talk, or we visited each other’s houses to talk, but there’s yet to be a clear outcome to those conversations.”
One of those senators, by Tulfo’s account, is being pulled in two directions. The lawmaker reportedly wants to resume working, with family members pushing for a return to sessions. What stops him is the abuse he anticipates landing on himself and his relatives. “May isa na ang gusto nila magtrabaho. Pero dahil nga itong grupo na ito, ang problema niya baka siya ay talagang mabubugbog ng mga basher ika nga na mga vlogger, mga troll, hindi niya alam,” Tulfo said.
He went further on what that abuse would look like. “That’s what I hear from their friends who are our colleagues in the majority… Besides being called Judas, they will be called ‘family of the devil’ and all the other things that will come their way. So that’s what they’re thinking now: how can they avoid that?” Tulfo said.
The hesitation matters because of how narrow the majority’s margin is. The 12 senators currently aligned with Gatchalian are enough to form a quorum but fall one vote short of the 13 required to install a Senate president outright. That shortfall explains why Gatchalian holds only the acting Senate president and president pro tempore posts, with the group invoking the 1949 Supreme Court decision in Avelino v. Cuenco, along with a 2008 precedent, to argue that 12 senators meet the quorum threshold.
Even the commitments the bloc has secured come with caveats. Among the senators being pursued, only Joel Villanueva has signaled he will appear at the special session anticipated next month — and Tulfo cautioned that the pledge goes only so far. Villanueva has agreed to attend and contribute to a quorum, but “whether he will vote for a Senate president is not yet clear,” Tulfo said.
Earlier signs of movement did surface. Senator Chiz Escudero, once counted among the Alan Peter Cayetano camp, turned up unexpectedly at the June 3 plenary that elevated Gatchalian to president pro tempore. The standoff has paralyzed the chamber since mid-May, leaving it as divided as it has been in years, with the contested arithmetic at the center of the deadlock.
