Pyrrhic victory

By Artchil B. Fernandez

DDS senators may have succeeded in seizing power in the Senate, but their victory comes at great cost — personally and politically to them. Some of them are wishing, now or hereafter, they never did it. The DDS Senate coup appears to be a pyrrhic victory, or a win that is tantamount to a defeat.

The public backlash against the coup was so huge that the Senate trust rating steeply plunged to 27 percent from the previous 49 percent, according to a Tangere survey done last May 12–13, 2026. Eight in 10 Filipinos, or 83 percent, the survey found, believe the change in leadership was politically motivated.

The Senate coup was so brazenly self-serving that Filipinos are not buying the alibi of the new majority that they did it for the good of the institution. A high majority of Filipinos have seen through the selfish motive of the DDS senators. They did it to advance and protect their personal interests and the family they are beholden to — the Dutertes. Political survival or paying political debt drove them to capture the Senate.

Most of the DDS senators are facing serious investigations, either on the ghost flood control projects scandal, business malpractices, or misdeeds of loved ones, that they closed ranks to use the Senate as a shield from law and justice. One of them is a fugitive from an international court, while another is a potential accomplice in the same crime. For them, the Senate is their sanctuary or refuge from the long arms of the law.

The Senate being used by DDS senators to evade, ignore, or even break the law highlighted the gross injustice existing in Philippine society. Ordinary Filipinos who run afoul of the law are immediately punished, even for minor infractions, while powerful figures like senators who committed high crimes can escape culpability using institutions like the Senate as protection. This is what angered the vast majority of Filipinos who, in their day-to-day lives, experience the unfair and partial application of the law. Worse, taxpayers’ money is used to fund the privilege of these abusive and entitled senators.

Staging a “shooting” drama to help a cohort of theirs escape the Senate premises to avoid arrest only sank the DDS senators further in the eyes of the public. Despite their best performative political acts — angrily pounding podiums, crying in the Senate halls, and playing the victim — Filipinos rejected their poor and sloppy acting. Only a few Filipinos accepted their phony performance, while the vast majority of the public either haughtily laughed at their playacting or angrily condemned their shameless hypocrisy.

Public rebuke of the DDS senators is widespread. Loren Legarda, for example, was thrashed by her alma maters for her shady and shoddy politics, with DDS supremo Alan Peter Cayetano sharing the same fate. Professional organizations and civil society organizations issued statements expressing disgust at the lack of moral scruples of DDS senators. Ethics have fled from their persons, with selfish interest as their only basis of decision-making. They are reduced to public memes and parodies, objects of ridicule.

In Mark 8:36, Jesus raised a question: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” In the case of the DDS senators, it’s for a measly bowl of fleeting power in the Senate! Soul aside, the DDS senators also traded their dignity, integrity, and respectability — their persons — in a Faustian bargain.

So what did the DDS senators really gain apart from ephemeral power, which can be lost any time due to their precarious and slim majority? It was a brittle or fragile profit.

But the biggest headache facing the DDS senators is how to accomplish their chief mission — acquit Sara Duterte — and make it acceptable to the public. Impeachment is not only a judicial process but also a political process. Through their number and control of the Senate, the DDS senators can manipulate the process to protect Sara Duterte, notwithstanding the evidence. They can legally acquit her, but politically letting her off the hook is a different matter. Making their machinations look fair is a difficult act.

The burden of creating a semblance of impartiality to make the impeachment process legitimate and acceptable to the Filipino people is now on the shoulders of DDS senators. They can be blatant and arrogant in their maneuvers, but they have to contend with the wrath of a betrayed public. Acting fair and impartial is hard and difficult for biased DDS senators who already declared they are against impeaching Sara Duterte. Playacting and pretending to be coy are stressful, requiring an enormous amount of energy.

If the evidence is strong against Sara Duterte yet the DDS senators ignore it, it will expose the DDS senators for what they really are, stripping them of any pretense. Public judgment on them will be harsh if the fate of the 11 senators who voted not to open the second envelope in the Estrada impeachment trial is a gauge. The DDS senators can suffer the worst political lynching once their partiality or bias is nakedly exposed.

Alan Peter Cayetano, as presiding officer of the impeachment court, is confronted with an agonizing dilemma — how to manipulate the impeachment process in favor of his master yet package the whole charade as fair. Once the public senses that he is nefariously engineering a fraud, the impeachment process is in peril. Things can get out of hand, with unimaginable consequences for Cayetano and his gang. There are many imponderables in the impeachment trial that Cayetano has no control over nor can foresee.

The dilemma of the DDS senators is simple: How to acquit Sara Duterte legally and politically? Exonerating her legally through the tyranny of numbers but making her look guilty in the eyes of the public not only cancels out but defeats the legal acquittal. If they colossally mishandle the trial, it will only make Sara Duterte appear guilty before the Filipino people. Instead of helping, the DDS senators will doom and seal her fate. They bear the brunt of responsibility for the entire trial since they are the majority.

What did the DDS senators really gain from their infamous coup? They not only destroyed their skimpy reputation but also assumed a terrible burden.