EVENTS LEADING TO SENATE MESS. On June 1 and 2, Monday and Tuesday (2026), the 13-person majority bloc led by Allan Peter Cayetano (APC) didn’t show up at the Senate. No quorum, no sessions: a paralyzed chamber.
On June 3, Wednesday, Francis “Chiz” Escudero attended, raising to 12 the 11-member minority, enabling it to claim a quorum.
The session led to a “counter-coup,” with the majority label stripped from the Cayetano bloc and installing Sherwin “Win” Gatchalian as president pro-tempore and acting Senate president.
BONE OF CONTENTION: QUORUM. Was there a valid and legal quorum?
The Cayetano bloc says there was none and APC has refused to step down as Senate president. The Constitution provides for a majority of each House to constitute a quorum. In the Senate (having 24 members), “absolute majority” is 13.
The now-Gatchalian bloc says there was quorum, counting only 22 members of the Senate as Jinggoy Estrada was arrested and detained on charge of plunder, and “Bato” Dela Rosa was in hiding from an International Criminal Court warrant for crimes against humanity.
The “new majority” cites the Supreme Court ruling in Avelino vs. Cuenco (GR # L-2821), which introduced the concept that senators beyond the Senate’s “coercive jurisdiction” may not necessarily be counted in determining quorum.
The Gatchalian bloc also points to a precedent: Last May 5, 2015, when the number of senators on the floor was short of the required 13 – Bong Revilla and Juan Ponce Enrile were detained on charges corruption related to pork barrel funds – then Senate president Franklin Drilon, with only 12 senators present, declared a quorum.
A PRINCIPAL FIGURE IN 1949 CRISIS was a Cebuano.
The respondent in the Supreme Court case that the new majority in the ongoing Senate controversy was Mariano Jesus Cuenco: Cebu governor and assemblyman from Cebu’s old fifth district, before he became senator (elected at large), and the fourth Senate president after the war.
Cuenco, after whom Cebu City’s famous street M.J. Cuenco Avenue was named, was born in Carmen town and college-educated partly in Colegio de San Carlos (now University of San Carlos).
HOW CUENCO BECAME SENATE PRESIDENT. Cuenco was installed as Senate president on Feb. 18, 1949 under controversial circumstances.
In that session, two senators, Lorenzo Tanada and Prospero Sanidad, had reserved for time to present charges, including tolerance of corruption, against then Senate president Jose Avelino.
At the opening of session, Avelino’s group delayed the expose by tactics aimed to prevent Tanada and Sanidad from speaking. A commotion in the gallery prompted a senator’s motion to adjourn. Avelino banged the gavel and he led his faction out of the Senate hall.
The remaining 12 senators continued the session, declared the position of Senate president vacant and later installed Cuenco as the chamber’s leader.
1949, 2026: 77 YEARS APART; SIMILARITIES, DIFFERENCES. The cases are the same, as both involved a dispute over the Senate leadership: the presidency, which in turn is related to control of the committees, especially the Blue Ribbon Committee.
In 1949, there was a rump session, which proceeded after a questionable adjournment. In 2026, there was a questionable session after one bloc had boycotted two successive sessions.
In one, the continued session elected a new president after declaring the seat vacant. In the other, the quorum-questioned session chose a president pro-tempore who became presiding officer/acting president.
RECOGNITION BY THE PRESIDENT. Elpidio Quirino, then the sixth president, recognized Mariano Jesus Cuenco’s election as Senate president.
Malacañang says it has recognized the new majority in the Senate, viewing the reorganization as “a way to break the legislative impasse…”
THE CORRUPTION FACTOR. An uncanny parallelism is the matter of corruption being purportedly exposed to the light and the alleged culprits being made to account for them.
In the Avelino-Cuenco squabble, two senators were about to speak about corruption involving tolerance or collusion by the then Senate president.
Fast forward to more than seven decades later, the raging controversy is essentially about controlling the Senate, after the House’s part was done, to push the competing political camps’ respective narratives about corruption: Which were more corrupt and who should be held accountable now?
The 2028 presidential race and the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte are eruptions of conflict that relate to protecting the survival of political camps. Both groups face charges of corruption before regular courts and Congress and before the court of public opinion.
SOLE PREROGATIVE OF THE SENATE. Selection, suspension or removal of its president is the Senate’s “sole prerogative.” Which prompted in 1949 the high court, at first, to decline ruling on the Avelino-Cuenco feud: hands off, that’s a political question.
Then the SC reconsidered, decided that it had the authority to settle the dispute. The leadership quarrel was “causing legislative paralysis and threatening public order.”
VALIDITY OF CREATING THE 1949 EXCEPTION seems not be raised by the Cayetano bloc, at least in public statements, as the conflict has yet to be raised in court.
Instead, the APC bloc contends that circumstances in the 2026 imbroglio are different from those in the 1949 skirmish. The current crisis, the Cayetano bloc says, doesn’t fit into the exception mold.
The case of Cuenco’s installation as president in 1949 was “exceptional” and “peculiar,” one attack on the 2026 Gatchalian bloc theory said.
Would “Bato” Dela Rosa and Jinggoy Estrada be deemed outside the “coercive jurisdiction of the court” so as to be excluded from the quorum count? Are they already deemed non-members of the Senate? Unlike in the 1949 Senate, the present Senate doesn’t have a senator who’s out of the country, not yet.
QUORUM NOT ENOUGH IF BUSINESS IS ELECTING OFFICERS. All right already, there was a valid quorum last June 3. The Senate could transact business. But could they elect new officers?
Some lawyers say that 12 senators can legally constitute a quorum under the exception declared by the SC in Cuenco vs. Avelino. But the Senate cannot elect a permanent president or president pro-tempore who, the lawyers argue, must have the vote of majority of all the members, present and not present on the floor.
The “majority of all members rule” – absolute majority of the chamber – applies, the argument runs, as the business of choosing Senate leaders has a “higher threshold.”