Romualdez's Resignation from the House Speakership:
A Crisis Within a Crisis?
The resignation of House Speaker Martin Romualdez is no mere personnel shift. In the heat and humidity of Philippine politics, nothing happens in isolation. This week’s handover — Romualdez out, Isabela Representative Faustino “Bojie” Dy III in — signals both continuity and confrontation, a power machine swapping parts even as its gears grind.
Romualdez’s departure came after weeks of swirling accusations over flood-control and infrastructure funds. Standing at the rostrum he once commanded, he framed his exit as institutional self-sacrifice: “I step down not in surrender, but in service.” He was, he said, clearing space for the Independent Commission on Infrastructure to probe without interference. It was a speech pitched as duty rather than downfall — a script drawn from an older, almost patrician style of politics.
But the question is, is it really consolidation for the Marcos camp, knowing the majority stood beside the president even without Romualdez at the Speakership? Or is this another attempt by the Duterte faction that sounds like “we’ll drag both together to hell” — a high-stakes gamble in the face of looming scandals and crises? That is the subtext haunting the marble corridors.
For context: in 2023, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Sara Duterte were maneuvering to seize control of Congress — budget power, impeachment, and ultimately a fast track to Malacañang for Sara. That coup failed because Romualdez had stitched together a coalition strong enough to repel it. He welded the floor into a disciplined bloc and opened the door to investigations into Duterte-era “confidential funds,” drug-war cover-ups, and procurement irregularities — probes that would have been dead on arrival under a fractured House.
And here is the subtle twist: even without the Speakership, Romualdez remains a solon — a sitting lawmaker with influence, alliances, and the power to hold sway over legislation, appointments, and the direction of inquiry. Stepping down from the gavel does not render him irrelevant; it merely shifts his leverage into subtler channels. He can still move agendas, rally votes, and act as kingmaker behind the scenes.
But, since Romualdez has resigned, does it end the situation? Not all who were against him stood with Duterte, and both Marcos and Duterte camps carry their own scandals — many overlapping with corruption allegations. One camp may rejoice, but does this resolve the crisis? Men like Frasco, Tiangco, and even Barzaga of Dasmariñas, Cavite reportedly nursed ambitions for the Speakership. Were their sights truly on Dy — or something larger? What comes next? Another script to blabber upon, recycled in the same corridors, the same halls, as if Philippine politics were a stage play with no final act?
Now Dy, a Marcos loyalist, takes the gavel with near-unanimous support. Malacañang did not blink, the majority did not splinter, and the handover looked more like a boardroom succession than a palace coup. Duterte allies will declare victory, but the numbers on the floor say otherwise. Committees remain stacked with Marcos allies. The budget process is still under Malacañang’s control. And Dy, like Romualdez before him, owes his chair to the Palace.
Romualdez’s exit may therefore be less about personal failure than about political cauterization — sacrificing one figure to preserve the larger structure. By stepping aside, he defuses a bomb under his own coalition, clears the way for an inquiry, and protects the president’s flank. It is the kind of move familiar to veterans of the Batasang Pambansa and Malacañang alike: better to lose a lieutenant than lose the line.
But the tension remains. The Dutertes are still circling 2028. Arroyo’s old networks have not evaporated. And the Independent Commission on Infrastructure could yet detonate fresh scandals. In this climate, stepping down can look like strategy, surrender, or both at once.
For all his critics, Romualdez’s consolidation of the House spared the country a darker turn — an unchecked Duterte restoration, a budgetary hostage crisis, a paralyzed presidency. His resignation now, voluntary or otherwise, marks a new phase: a power struggle that will resolve itself not in the open but within the institutions themselves. In the brittle light of Philippine politics, that is not nothing.
And so the gavel passes, the machine hums, and the question lingers in the echo of Romualdez’s farewell: consolidation or conflagration? In the Philippines of the 2020s, sometimes the answer is both.