LEAKIPEDIA | The eight-day king

How fragile is a Senate presidency born from a coup? Fragile enough that the ever-saintly Alan Peter Cayetano reportedly moved with biblical urgency, securing control over appointments, salaries, and spending faster than the Creator separated light from darkness.

After all, when the next coup may be just around the corner, every hour counts.

A whirlwind week of power‑mapping

Cayetano was elected Senate President in mid‑May 2026 after a tight, polarized vote that ousted Vicente Sotto III and immediately triggered talk of counter‑moves and potential leadership changes. Within that same week—specifically on 19 and 20 May—he signed at least four Special Orders quietly redrawing the internal power map of the Senate bureaucracy.

One order delegated appointment‑signing authority for all positions with Salary Grade 25 and below to just two people: Senate Secretary Jose Luis Montales and his own Chief of Staff, Alfredo Labrador. Another shifted approval for salary increments and adjustments (NOSI and NOSA) up to Salary Grade 30 to the same duo. A third handed Montales the power to sign for all transactions below ₱500,000—and even higher amounts if they qualified as “recurring transactions” under an existing policy order. A fourth gave Labrador and Director Patricia Villar in the Office of the Senate President broad authority to sign “all administrative and financial matters” on his behalf. In two days, a newcomer at the helm had effectively routed routine but consequential decisions on hiring, pay and day‑to‑day spending into a very tight circle of trusted lieutenants.

Why the rush?

On one level, the technocratic explanation is straightforward: a Senate President buried in impeachment, gunfire scandals and public feuds cannot micromanage every appointment, salary step, or purchase request. Delegation is normal in any large institution, and the Senate’s own rules contemplate that the presiding officer will act “through duly authorized officers” in administering the Secretariat and personnel. If you believe Cayetano’s own public line—that he may have “an eight‑day mission” and that leadership is about impact, not duration—then racing to set internal procedures looks like a bid for efficiency in a short, stormy window.

But the political context makes the timing impossible to read as neutral housekeeping. By late May, former Senate President Koko Pimentel was already saying on radio that Cayetano’s combative style had “paralyzed” the chamber and suggesting he consider stepping down “for the good of the Senate.” Cayetano himself was admitting “enticements” and “threats” around possible leadership change and saying any move to unseat him would likely be revealed “at the last minute.” In other words, he knew from day one that his tenure was hanging by a thread. When a leader with that awareness pushes a full suite of delegation orders out the door within forty‑eight hours, that is not just efficiency; it is insurance.

Delegation as both control and deniability

Delegation sounds like the opposite of control, but in practice it can be a way to control more with less personal exposure. By designating a small number of loyalists to sign “by authority of the Senate President,” Cayetano achieves at least three things at once.

First, he centralizes real power in his own camp rather than in the broader institutional bureaucracy. The Senate Secretary is technically an institutional officer, but these orders yoke that office tightly to the political agenda of the sitting President of the Senate, while also empowering his chief of staff and a director in his personal office to manage appointments, pay adjustments and administrative/financial paperwork. Second, he creates a buffer: if questionable hiring, rushed promotions or controversial disbursements later surface—for instance in relation to already brewing flood‑control and procurement narratives—he can say truthfully that he did not physically sign every document, even though the authority flowed from him. Third, he builds continuity: should a coup topple him quickly, his own people would still be sitting in key desks with formal signing authority until a new Senate President actively revokes or replaces these orders.

This is why the speed matters. If you have months to secure your position, you can negotiate a more deliberative framework, possibly sharing power with committee chairs or re‑examining old policies. If you suspect you might have weeks—or even “eight days”—you move fast to embed your influence where it will outlast your speech at the rostrum.

What it reveals about Cayetano’s style

Cayetano has long been described by both allies and critics as a “fighter,” someone who rarely yields ground voluntarily and who often makes pre‑emptive moves in internal power struggles. His rapid push to re‑wire the Senate’s internal signing chain is of a piece with that reputation. Rather than wait for the dust to settle, he acted immediately to put his own people at the choke points of bureaucracy—appointments, pay, and payments—areas that may not make headlines daily but shape institutional loyalties over time.

At the same time, this episode underscores a deeper structural problem: in a Senate already described as “profoundly divided,” where majorities flip on coups and term‑sharing deals rather than clear policy differences, the bureaucracy becomes prized terrain for short‑term political control. Every new Senate President arrives knowing they could be removed as quickly as they arrived, so there is a strong incentive to hard‑wire authority into the hands of a few trusted operatives as quickly as possible. Cayetano is not the first to play that game, but the compressed timeline and breadth of his delegations make the pattern unusually visible.

Why this should worry us

None of these Special Orders are, by themselves, proof of corruption. They may even make the flow of paperwork more predictable for staff who now know exactly which signatures to chase. The danger lies in what they normalize: a culture where a precarious Senate President, already under pressure over impeachment politics and institutional crises, quietly rewires internal controls in his first few days, placing critical levers in the hands of a very small, politically aligned group.