BLOOD TIES: VICENTE SR. AND TITO SOTTO. Vicente Y. Sotto Sr. (1877-1950) was Vicente “Tito” Sotto III’s paternal grandfather and namesake.
Tito’s father, Marcelino Antonio “Nonong” Ojeda Sotto Sr. was a son of Vicente. Tito was also grand-nephew of Filemon Y. Sotto (1872-1966), brother of Vicente.
Both Vicente and Filemon were also senators, lawyers and journalists. Tito Sotto is a senator, not a lawyer or journalist, but is an actor and entertainer, which largely explains his long and repetitive election to the Senate.
Tito Sotto was born in Manila (August 24, 1948) and was raised and educated in the capital city, at Colegio de San Juan de Letran from elementary to college.
TITO SOTTO’S CEBU ROOTS. He has acknowledged his Cebu roots and heritage, especially during election campaigns. But his ties to Cebuanos are not as close and warm as it should have been or could be.
He had not been involved in local politics (expected) and he is often absent or his presence hardly felt in times of crisis or jubilation in Cebu (surprising). He has been identified more with Manila than Cebu.
NO CEBU SENATOR SINCE JUNE 30, 2016. Any listing of Cebuano senators often exclude Tito Sotto.
In a February 16, 2023 column in The Freeman, titled “Remembering the 15 illustrious senators from Cebu,” Atty. Josephus Jimenez didn’t count Tito Sotto as senator from Cebu. No mention of the Senate president.
The last Cebuano senator standing was Sergio “Serge” Osmeña III who served his last term in the 15th and 16th Congress, from 2010 to 2016. From 17th Congress to the present 20th Congress, which ends in 2028, Cebu has had "zero representation" in the Senate.
ONE PETITIONER GRABBED ATTENTION. The petition for indirect contempt filed against Tito Sotto last February 13, 2026 alleges he made remarks against the Supreme Court’s resolution declaring Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment unconstitutional.
Sotto’s remarks were allegedly “demeaning,” “degrading,” and “disrespectful” and “went beyond legitimate commentary.”
The SC will examine those words and the context they were uttered by Tito Sotto.
One petitioner, lawyer Harold Respicio, stood out during the filing because of his loud voice, as if he were speaking to a group of deaf people. Decidedly his voice -- shouted though not shrill, consistently in the same high decibel, without high or low and cadence -- definitely grabbed people’s interest.
‘LIKE-GRANDPA-LIKE-GRANDSON.’ Atty. Respicio didn’t say Tito Sotto behaved in 2026 like Tito’s grandfather Vicente Sotto in 1948. Yet some people who watched the video clip might confuse him as saying that.
What Respicio he did say was that he’s confident about winning their case against Tito Sotto because of the decided case against the grandfather Vicente.
VICENTE SAID THINGS WORSE THAN WHAT TITO SAID. The SC decision (In re Vicente Sotto, January 21, 2949) said the court found Vicente Sotto guilty of contempt because:
[1] In all Vicente Sotto statements he “misrepresented to the public the cause of the charge against him” was assault on press freedom when “in fact he was charged with intending to interfere and influence” the final decision on the case of reporter Angel Parazo of Manila Bulletin.
Parazo had refused to name the source of his news story on leakage of the 1948 bar exams questions. For Vicente Sotto’s purpose, the SC said, Sotto used “intimidation and false accusations.”
[2] Vicente Sotto didn’t limit himself to criticizing and commenting on the Parazon ruling that jailed the reporter for 30 days. He also “intimidated” the SC justices with a plan to present a bill in Congress that would reorganize the court and reduce the number of justices.
[3] Vicente Sotto called the SC justices “incompetent and narrow-minded” and a “constant peril to liberty and democracy,” having “committed deliberately in the last years so many blunders and injustices.”
RELATED: Supreme Court ‘defamed’ Cebu’s Vicente Sotto in punishing him for contempt
COMPARING THEM WITH TITO’S REMARKS. There’s no case that the younger Sotto is trying to influence. The case on Sara Duterte’s impeachment that the Senate president criticized was already terminated.
Tito Sotto’s remarks would no longer affect the ruling which has become final. Nothing close to what grandpa Vicente did decades ago.
MENTIONING CHARTER CHANGE cannot be likened to Vicente Sotto threatening to file a bill directed against SC justices. And Tito Sotto wasn’t expressly calling for charter changes on the high court’s judicial review power or its composition and structure.
Tito Sotto’s talk about the rules governing impeachment, including the creation of a separate impeachment court, called for a study of possible changes. He was not wielding a figurative club to threaten the SC justices with.
TITO SOTTO NOT THE TIGER HIS GRANDPA WAS. Despite or because of his being a lawyer and journalist -- armed with the clout of his personality and position – Vicente Sotto seemed unstoppable.
A separate concurring opinion written by Associate Justice Gregorio Perfecto recited the alleged sins and offenses of Vicente Sotto as a law practitioner and as a writer and publisher.
Which must have contributed to the en banc decision ordering Vicente Sotto to pay a fine of P1,000 (“potentially” over P100,000 in purchasing power today), with imprisonment in case of failure to pay, and to explain to the SC why he shouldn’t be disbarred.
The court ruling wasn’t enforced. Vicente Sotto died on May 28, 1950 at 73. Before his passing, he continued criticizing the high court decision against reporter Parazo.
Tito Sotto may be likened to a lamb if compared to the tiger that Vicente Sotto was.