The Senate’s accountability gap in 4 points

Monday’s drama in the Senate was surprising only for its theatrics—a leadership coup in the afternoon, a fugitive senator hiding in the chamber’s inner recesses by early evening, and law enforcers kept at bay by closed doors and barbed wire. 

The Senate has long been the place where senators charged with serious crimes elsewhere have managed to keep their seats. PCIJ research shows that all but a few members of the current chamber have faced charges or investigations at the Ombudsman, the Sandiganbayan, the justice department, the courts, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and now also the International Criminal Court. 

Our list of charges against senators (see table) includes a few frivolous or unsubstantiated accusations, but nearly all of them are serious enough to warrant more thorough scrutiny. 

In a few instances, the Senate itself has helped trigger those investigations—like in 2014 when 13 senators signed a blue ribbon committee report that recommended plunder charges against three members of the Upper House. More recently,  the flood-control hearings by the blue ribbon committee headed by Senator Panfilo Lacson have produced testimony now driving Ombudsman probes of three sitting senators. Lacson’s findings, however, are not an official committee report, having gotten only seven of the nine signatures needed to pass in committee; a partial report was instead submitted this week to the Ombudsman. 

Holding senators to account has been challenging. On Monday, the new Senate leadership shielded Senator Ronald dela Rosa from an unsealed ICC warrant. Can the new Senate majority—many of whom are themselves being investigated—hold the impeached Vice President Sara Duterte accountable? 

Consider this:

1) Eleven of the 13 senators behind Monday’s Senate coup are facing active or unresolved investigations. Six of them—Jinggoy Estrada, Chiz Escudero, Joel Villanueva, Mark Villar, Camille Villar, and Bong Go—are tied to ongoing flood-control corruption probes. The coalition currently behind Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano is based as much on legal vulnerability as by political alignment with Vice President Duterte—and the two are connected.

2) The charges against all but a handful of senators span every administration since martial law, indicating that the problem is not attributable to any political faction or form of government. They show the persistence of the Philippine political elite’s entanglement in both state violence and corruption.

3) Senators have largely emerged unscathed from the charges due to political connections, timing, and a justice system that is marked by long delays and a tendency to produce outcomes favorable to the powerful. The senators most likely to vote for acquitting Vice President Duterte are also those whose own legal exposure most closely mirrors hers: unexplained wealth and misuse of public funds. 

4) The Senate, which will judge the Vice President, embodies the accountability gap her impeachment is meant to address. By placing dela Rosa under protective custody, the new majority has signaled how it intends to handle the impeachment trial.—PCIJ.org