Timeline: Alan Peter Cayetano’s Rise to and Struggle for Power

It has been almost a month since Senator Alan Peter Cayetano brought Sen. Bato dela Rosa out of hiding, removed Sen. Tito Sotto from the Senate leadership through a majority vote, and took over as Senate president. Now, the camps of Cayetano and Sen. Sherwin “Win” Gatchalian, the disputed acting Senate president, are wrestling for the majority and leadership positions. After a few other chaotic events in the Senate, this tug-of-war may spell the end of Cayetano’s reign over the upper chamber. But what got him here in the first place?

Cayetano’s First Years in Congress

The politician has spent a large fraction of his career shuttling between the House of Representatives and the Senate, following in the footsteps of his father, the late legislator Renato “Rene” Luna Cayetano. In 1998, he was elected the representative of Taguig-Pateros, a post once held by his father, and became a staunch critic of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration. In 2007, he ran for senator under the Genuine Opposition coalition, an electoral alliance that stood against Arroyo, and won a seat in the upper chamber. 

The Second Senate Term

That year, he was made the chairman of the Blue Ribbon committee and led the panel’s investigation into the NBN-ZTE scandal, which involved the government awarding a contract to Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE for the proposed but canceled National Broadband Network (NBN). As Blue Ribbon chair, he also led the continuation of investigations into the Fertilizer Fund Scam. Both scandals also involved Arroyo, who still served as president.

In 2013, Cayetano was re-elected under Team PNoy, a big-tent electoral coalition backed by the administration of then-President Benigno Aquino III. Big-tent coalitions cover parties and candidates across the political spectrum. Likewise, Team PNoy backed candidates from Akbayan, the Liberal Party, Cayetano’s Nacionalista Party, and the PDP-Laban party that’s come to be associated with Rodrigo Duterte.

How Cayetano Became a Duterte Ally

In September 2015, Cayetano announced that he would run for vice president in the upcoming national elections. He made the announcement in Davao City, reportedly to attempt to convince then-mayor Rodrigo Duterte to be his running mate. Two months later, Duterte accepted Cayetano’s offer and announced that he would run for president.

During the vice presidential debates in April 2016, he and then-Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. argued about statements Duterte allegedly made. According to Marcos, Duterte said that he would pass the presidency to the Ilocano senator if he failed to end crime in six months. But Cayetano claimed that Duterte had only said it in jest.

While Duterte would go on to win the presidential election, Cayetano wasn’t as successful, losing to Camarines Sur Third District Representative Leni Robredo. However, he became instrumental in the country’s relations with China under Duterte when he was appointed Foreign Affairs secretary in 2017. He held the post until the 2019 midterm elections, in which he ran and won the race to represent Taguig-Pateros in Congress again.

During his new term as congressman and House speaker, he was criticized for his inaction on bills seeking the renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise, which ultimately led to the network’s shutdown in 2020. Duterte had accused ABS-CBN of biased reporting and threatened to close it down, leading critics to believe that the president was a major influence on Cayetano and the House of Representatives’ decision not to renew the network’s franchise.

The First Power Struggle in Congress

That year, Cayetano’s speakership was called into question by other House members over the proposed public works budget for 2021. Former Negros Oriental Rep. Arnie Teves claimed that there was a disparity in the allocation of funds, which allegedly favored districts like Taguig City and Camarines Sur over other congressional districts. Amid infighting in the House of Representatives, Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco was pitted against Cayetano and eventually replaced him when the latter was voted out of the speakership.

Ongoing Leadership Disputes in the Senate

As recent events would have it, that was not the last time Cayetano would fight for a leadership position in the legislature. In 2022, he won a Senate seat again.

In September 2025, Sotto snagged the Senate presidency from Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero, who faced allegations of involvement in the flood-control scandal and was criticized for failing to act on the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte “forthwith.”

The impeachment case against the vice president was reignited in early 2026, and as the House of Representatives voted to impeach her on May 11, Cayetano and his allies in the Senate moved to make him its new president, ousting Sotto.

Following the May 13 shootout and dela Rosa’s escape, Cayetano was once again criticized, this time for mismanaging the Senate and the feud between its two blocs. On June 3, the Senate minority and Escudero, with the rest of the majority absent, voted to declare all committee chairmanships vacant and make Sen. Win Gatchalian the acting Senate president.

As the upper chamber’s blocs argue over the legitimacy of the new takeover, the official website of the Senate of the Philippines has stopped tagging Cayetano as the Senate president. The House of Representatives and Malacañang have also recognized Gatchalian’s camp as the new Senate majority.

Cayetano’s loss in the leadership dispute is apparent, but the longtime legislator isn’t keen to give up his seat just yet, despite calls for his resignation from fellow lawmakers and citizens. In a press briefing on Monday, June 8, he asserted that the Gatchalian bloc had “illegally held a session” in the absence of Cayetano’s bloc, and that Sara Duterte’s impeachment proceedings carry on “uninterrupted” with him as the presiding senator-judge.

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