Is This the Time for the Forthwith?
The abrupt fall of Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero yesterday is being dressed up as the natural course of legislative politics—alliances shifting, loyalties tested, numbers counted. But the swiftness of the ouster, and the choice of timing, leaves the public to ask: what was it really about?
On paper, the vote was about “integrity” and “trust,” couched in parliamentary language. But strip away the floor speeches, and what remains is a Senate rattled by the specter of corruption in flood-control contracts and the unresolved question of accountability in high places.
It is no secret that Escudero’s name was dragged into the storm, through his acknowledged links with Centerways Construction, a contractor among the favored few in the present administration. Escudero’s defense—that a campaign donor is not a government beneficiary by default—rings familiar to those who have lived long enough to recall how politics and public works have always been too cozy for comfort. Back then it was all about roads and bridges; today it is flood control. The refrain remains: billions wash away with the first monsoon rains, while accountability evaporates in committee hearings.
But this drama is not just about contracts. It comes in the wake of the failed impeachment move against Vice President Sara Duterte—a case the Senate hastily archived despite loud murmurs about confidential funds and opaque spending. That move, critics say, already revealed the Senate’s instinct to shield power rather than confront it. Escudero, whether by design or omission, became the lightning rod for frustrations both in the chamber and in the public square.
Hence the whispers, spoken now with increasing boldness: that what is needed is a tribunal, a forthwith, to address not only profiteering in flood projects but the broader malaise of impunity. For how long will the nation accept that billions can vanish into “special” budgets, or that friends of friends can become overnight kings of infrastructure?
Senate President Vicente Sotto III assumes the gavel with the usual promises of stability. Yet stability without accountability is the stillness of stagnant waters—breeding grounds for more rot. If the upper chamber wishes to recover its stature as a sentinel of democracy, it must prove it by pressing the flood-control probe to its bitter end, no matter whose names are entangled.
The hour is late, but not lost. The people’s patience is not infinite. The call for a forthwith is not nostalgia for parliamentary theater; it is the demand of a citizenry weary of recycled scandals. The Senate must decide: will it be remembered as a sanctuary for convenience, or as the place where reckoning finally began?