LOOK BACK: When Alan Cayetano was House speaker

Alan Peter Cayetano joined a short list of lawmakers who led both the upper and lower chambers of Congress, after a coup installed him as Senate president on May 11.

His Senate presidency started off with a literal bang, as two days into his assumption of the post, a shooting incident took place amid the Senate’s attempts to protect Senator Bato dela Rosa from an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant. There are political observers who are of the opinion that the day Cayetano assumed the top Senate post was the day the Senate died.

Cayetano served as House speaker from 2019 to 2020. Here’s a look back at his 15-month-long speakership, which was also marked by controversy.

House leadership crisis

From the outset, Cayetano’s House speakership was part of a power-sharing agreement brokered by then-president Rodrigo Duterte. 

Three congressmen had wanted the speakership for themselves — Cayetano, Marinduque Representative Lord Allan Velasco, and Leyte 1st District Representative Martin Romualdez — to whom Duterte proposed the term-sharing agreement during a May 2019 conference in Japan. 

In this deal, Cayetano would become House speaker first for 15 months, followed by Velasco for the succeeding 21 months.

Velasco and Romualdez were said to have rejected the deal, so Duterte said he would let the House members decide on their own.

Come June, as the 18th Congress was about to begin, Velasco’s speakership bid had the backing of four major blocs of the House. That’s when Cayetano cried foul, saying Velasco reneged on the deal.

With tensions rising in the House, Duterte stepped in once again to resolve the speakership race by enforcing the original term-sharing agreement. 

But in those 15 months leading up to the end of Cayetano’s term in October 2020, Cayetano kicked up another storm in an attempt to hold on to his seat.

He repeatedly claimed that Velasco was out to oust him before his 15 months were up, which the Marinduque representative repeatedly denied. 

As Velasco pushed for the term-sharing deal to push through as scheduled on October 14, 2020, Cayetano then reasoned out that he needed to stay in power to ensure the smooth passage of the 2021 national budget, although he was also accused of holding the budget hostage to stay in power. He even removed Velasco’s allies from key positions in the House.

Cayetano and his allies even repeatedly went live on Facebook and publicly prayed together during a session as tensions continued to mount.

Once it was clear that Velasco still had the numbers to wrest the House speakership from him, attempts to prevent the ouster became physical barriers: the Batasan’s plenary hall was locked, electricity was cut off, and the Wi-Fi connection became inaccessible for a livestream.

Velasco and his allies had to resort to holding their own session at a sports club 17 minutes away from the House of Representatives compound, where 186 lawmakers voted to oust Cayetano.

Despite legal questions hounding the unconventional ouster, Cayetano still ended up officially losing the House speakership — though he resigned via livestream just minutes after Velasco was declared the new House speaker. Cayetano then apologized to Duterte for his “misunderstanding” of the President’s directive.

Though Cayetano received Duterte’s forgiveness, he remained hostile to Velasco for the rest of his term. He formed an “independent majority” bloc called the “BTS sa Kongreso,” which angered K-pop fans.

The BTS bloc continued to oppose Velasco and his allies, but the speakership remained with the Marinduque congressman until the end of the 18th Congress in 2022.

The SEA Games kaldero

It was during Cayetano’s House speakership when controversies related to his chairmanship of the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee (Phisgoc) also erupted. 

Most notable is the P50-million cauldron that served as a “symbol of the games,” according to Cayetano — though the 2019 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games had, in general, been considered poorly organized.

The infamous kaldero was just the tip of the iceberg. A 2019 Rappler report traced the P6 billion worth of SEA Games funds back to Cayetano — from his days as foreign secretary in 2018 to the Philippine Sports Commission, which entered into an agreement with Phisgoc and the Philippine Olympic Committee to host the 30th SEA Games.

Experts cited in the Rappler report had also pointed out that Cayetano being House speaker and head of a private foundation like Phisgoc that spends government money may have presented a conflict of interest. (READ: Is it constitutional for Cayetano to be PHISGOC chair?) 

ABS-CBN shutdown

Media giant ABS-CBN was shut down under Cayetano’s speakership, too. Some lawmakers blamed the House speaker and his allies for delaying the House hearings on the ABS-CBN franchise, leading to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) issuing a cease and desist order a day after the television network’s congressional franchise expired.

“I would like to apologize for the failure of Congress to do its job. Kasalanan namin ito eh. Kasalanan ng Kongreso ito. But more important, I’d like to say, squarely, kasalanan ni Speaker Cayetano ito. Pagkukulang niya ito sa bayan,” Buhay Representative Lito Atienza told ANC’s Headstart in May 2020. 

(I would like to apologize for the failure of Congress to do its job. This is our fault. This is Congress’ fault. But more importantly, I’d like to say, squarely, this is Speaker Cayetano’s fault. This is what he failed to do for the nation.)

A February 2020 Rappler report that collated data from the 17th and 18th Congresses found that both the House and Senate were quick to renew franchises of major broadcast networks — except ABS-CBN’s.

On May 5, 2020, ABS-CBN officially went off air. Cayetano claimed that the move was “simply part of this season’s uprooting of the weeds and a reclaiming [of] our patrimony from the oligarchs.”  

How will Cayetano fare at the helm of the upper chamber this time? – Rappler.com