Dear Alan Peter Cayetano,

You will forgive me if I do not begin with condolences. The occasion of your ouster as Senate president provides that rare excuse for day drinking. 

I somehow managed to summon the patience to read your long-winded valedictory posted on your Facebook page while waiting for my favorite bottle of red to chill.

What can I say? It’s another masterpiece in duplicitous verbiage. 

Yes, you conceded the numbers, but in so many words, you were telling everyone that you were not ousted. You were martyred. 

No one has ever accused you of modesty. And this latest statement on your preferred forum, not the plenary, justifies that conclusion. After all, it’s in plenary where your colleagues can unmask your hypocrisy, leaps of logic, and perverted readings of the Bible, the law, and the Constitution.

‘Delulu’ demeanor

Mister Cayetano, you conceded the Senate presidency with the same self-possessed, delulu demeanor that was on full display the day you wrested the leadership from Senator Tito Sotto. 

Invoking yet again the name of God in capital letters, you honored “the deep personal sacrifice” of a bloc mate arrested for plunder and another one who claimed, in a Facebook video, that he would also be arrested by authorities. You will not forget them and their sacrifices, you said. The fight for the truth and the people will continue.

Mister Cayetano, this is exactly the declaration of a person who would like history to remember him as a martyr rather than someone who ran out of allies.

And excuse me if I do not call you Kuya Alan, as you asked your followers and the public. 

When you were Senate president, you spent your working days and even weekends taking potshots at fellow senators. Imagine a leader of the chamber denigrating the integrity and the principles of colleagues who belong to the opposite aisle while extolling the supposed moral ascendancy of your leadership and your bloc. That was not being brotherly. That was being bitchy. 

And you pursued this line of attack in your valedictory by anointing those who remained with you as heroes while those in the majority as part of a Palace-instigated cover up.

Brief and chaotic

But the line “cover-up time muna,” deployed as a parting shot, gains credibility only if delivered by someone with demonstrable clean hands. Overpriced SEA Games “kaldero” anyone?

What made me laugh out loud was your declaration that you were not after the title, that the prize was incidental, and the power fleeting. Yet your tenure, especially in its final weeks, is best defined by your obsessive efforts to keep the gavel at all costs, by counting heads with near paranoid urgency. This frantic head-counting betrays your claim of being indifferent to the prize.

There is irony here that deserves noting: you spent the weeks preceding your ouster delivering speeches about God’s plan for you. You showed your Pokemon collection and discussed its supposed relevance to the chaos in the chamber. Throughout your tenure, you kept insisting that the other side was causing chaos, that you were willing to step down if they had the numbers. Yet you ignored the obvious: that as early as June 3, the majority of your colleagues simply no longer wanted you to lead them.

Mister Cayetano, your tenure as Senate President was brief and chaotic. And your leadership proceeded from the same conviction that characterized your term as Speaker: you, and only you, could define what was legitimate and moral.  

The Senate has spoken, Mister Cayetano. Your colleagues want you out. In a democracy, that is how things are decided, not by Facebook Live, trolls, or Pokemon collections.

The exit is that way, Mister Cayetano. Goodbye. – Rappler.com

Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a government and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former vice president Jejomar Binay.