Alan Cayetano asks minority to make stand for independence, let Senate 'go quiet'

Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano on Monday asked members of the minority in the Senate to join the majority in letting the Senate fall silent after Sen. Jinggoy Estrada was taken into custody after he was charged with plunder before the Sandiganbayan.

In a statement issued as he and members of the majority skipped the Senate session on Monday, Cayetano said the Senate's independence was being challenged.

"I am speaking truth that each senator already knows — the independence of this institution, and the legal standing of any of its members, are not currencies. The day they become things to be traded, is the day that the Senate is diminished. And after the Senate, the Republic," Cayetano said.

"So I put one question to you, not as the majority but as the chamber: will you stand for the Senate’s independence? I am asking you to join one deliberate act — to let the Senate go quiet, together and by choice, so the country is made to ask why a co-equal branch would fall silent rather than be made to serve," he added.

Cayetano's call came after Estrada surrendered and was arrested on plunder charges tied to alleged congressional insertions and kickbacks related to anomalous flood control projects.

Estrada has said that he had been told that his case would go away if he joined the minority senators to form a new majority. He indicated that his arrest was a consequence of his political views.

“To my colleagues in the Minority: The Senate is a co-equal branch of government. It is not a prize to be claimed by anyone. Events of the past few days may have blurred this distinction, but what happened with one of our colleagues today brings it sharply back into focus,” Cayetano wrote in a statement.

“So I put one question to you, not as the Majority but as the chamber: will you stand for the Senate’s independence?” he added.

Estrada surrendered and was arrested within the Senate premises after the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division issued a warrant for his charges of plunder in connection with his alleged involvement in the flood control scandal.

Before his arrest, Estrada held a press conference where he declared that he would not be seeking the Senate’s protective custody.

According to Cayetano, he acknowledges the difference in the leadership between the majority and the minority bloc, but noted that such matters are the Senate’s business.

“But no matter our disagreements, we must all agree that it is the Senate’s own business to settle. This chamber answers to God and the people who sent us here, and to no one outside these walls,” Cayetano said.

On Tuesday last week, the Senate minority bloc walked out of the plenary after the proposed amendment to its rules to allow senators to participate remotely in sessions was raised.

Apart from upholding Senate independence, Cayetano called on the minority to join them in " resisting allowing partisan politics to dictate the chamber’s direction.”

“The door is open. What you do with it is yours to answer — to this institution, and to the people watching it,” Cayetano said. –NB, GMA News