We’ve seen the memes. We’ve heard the political commentaries. Then came our collective sighs of exhaustion and desperation for change. If we’re being honest, calling the Philippine Senate a “circus” feels insulting to circuses. At least circuses require discipline and hard work.
If you are not furious by now, what is it going to take? If this blatant mockery of our collective intelligence doesn’t turn your stomach, then you have simply allowed yourself to be thoroughly numbed by the sheer, relentless absurdity of the state.
The Senate thinks Filipinos can be sold this overwrought, unending teleserye. And at this point, that is the only possible explanation. Because no serious government would behave like this unless it genuinely believed the public was too exhausted or too powerless to fight back.
A government serious about public service would not allow hearings to become ego competitions. It would not tolerate officials behaving like online trolls with the country’s most powerful microphones. It would not transform national issues into theatrical performances designed to manipulate public sentiment.
But that is exactly what is happening.
Every Senate session now feels like a battle between fragile egos pretending to be defenders of common good. Everybody wants to look like the hero. Everybody wants the viral moment. Everybody suddenly becomes emotional, patriotic, morally outraged, constitutionally concerned, deeply offended. Then the cameras turn off and somehow the ordinary Filipino is still underpaid, overworked, mistreated, and abandoned.
It is such a terrifying contrast to how survival is negotiated in this country. Walk into any convenience store, any corporate high-rise, or any factory in the metro, and you will see the terms of everyday existence dictated by a brutal rule. No work, no pay. To be caught in the daily paralysis of public transit is a deductible offense that cuts straight into your food budget. To get sick is an expensive liability that can ruin a family. The ordinary Filipino worker is monitored by biometric clocks, subjected to rigid performance reviews, and forced to stretch a below-minimum wage that is less a living salary and more a slow, mathematically calculated starvation.
In the real world, accountability is immediate and entirely unforgiving. If you do not show up, you disappear from the payroll. If you break the law, the state does not negotiate; it locks you up.
But cross the threshold into the Senate of the Philippines, and the laws of labor, justice, and human decency are instantly suspended.
What we are witnessing right now is not governance. It’s a long drawn out fight to bend the law and keep the select few glued to the seat of power. It is a premium, taxpayer-funded spectacle where accountability is treated as an optional aesthetic. The highest legislative body in the land has degenerated into an absolute embarrassment of a reality show where the actors write their own rules, pocket their six-figure salaries, and broadcast their privilege in real-time while the rest of the nation pays the electricity bill for the theater.
The public is watching, and the consensus is a collective scream of disgust. Where is the national emergency that justifies this? There is none. There is only a bald-headed evasion of the law, and yet the majority is working overtime to accommodate it. It is a level of systemic sarcasm so profound it feels like a violent slap in the face to every single citizen who queues for hours just to get to a job that barely feeds them.
While the working class faces immediate precarity for missing a single shift, a state actor evading a warrant is handed the ultimate corporate luxury: a state-sanctioned, highly compensated work-from-home arrangement from an undisclosed hideout. The state protects its own because, at this point, almost everyone in that majority block allegedly has a record to hide, a case to bury, or an ally to shield. With little to no attempt to disprove evidences, except craft surreal ways to evade due process and accountability.
But the farce runs deeper than a single missing lawmaker. Look at the plenary floor, which has transformed into a toxic swamp of weaponized disinformation and performative hysteria. We have senators using their precious floor time to broadcast horrible propaganda tools by peddling deepfakes, cheap social media clips, and manufactured conspiracies about charter change and age requirements for the 2028 elections, designed entirely to manipulate public anxiety and stir the political pot. It is an absolute disgrace and we can’t help but ask, is there an end to this dark, unfunny comedy?
We see committee hearings transformed into auditions for daytime television, completely stripped of dignity. We are forced to watch individuals who were elected to craft the legal framework of a republic treat the senate floor like a personal playground, grandstanding for TikTok clips, interjecting with mind-numbing, kindergarten logic, flexing toxic machismo, and turning serious national concerns into a mockery of intelligence. They are acting like immature, inappropriate, and unethical clowns because they know the circus sells, and they expect the Filipino people to be too stupid or too easily distracted to notice the bait-and-switch.
And in a twist that completely transcends satire, look at how those with power operate when challenged. When the heated debates peak over the ridiculous motion to let a remote fugitive dictate state policy, the majority resorts to petty gaslighting, planting corporate-style intrigue against the minority, and claiming the Senate is “under attack” from the very people trying to protect the constitution. The arrogance is suffocating. The zarzuela, far from entertaining.
The institution has been hijacked by a “majority” that swaps titles like currency. The watchdogs are the ones wearing the leashes, and they are entirely comfortable serving nobody but themselves and their political masters.
The law in this country has become a cage for the marginalized and a luxury vehicle for the elite. It is an institution that demands absolute compliance from those who have the least, while providing infinite padding, electronic voting loops, and procedural shields for those who have the most. It is an embarrassment that our taxes are being used to nourish and shelter fugitives while the rest of the country starves under the weight of an unlivable economy.
They are counting on our exhaustion. They are operating on the assumption that if they make the circus loud enough, chaotic enough, and exhausting enough, we will forget that we are the ones funding the tickets. They want us to look at the bickering, the walkouts, the midnight coups, and the fake news as mere political entertainment rather than what it truly as a calculated, systemic betrayal of public trust.
It is time to wake up and feel the heat of this rot. This is not how public servants behave. This is not how a republic survives.
When the halls that are supposed to dictate the rule of law become a sanctuary for fugitives, a factory for propaganda, and a playground for the wealthy, the entire system loses its legitimacy. People are waking up, their eyes are wide open, and the anger is boiling over.
If you are not angry, if you are not deeply disturbed by this absolute circus, you are proving them right and you letting them get away with the robbery of our national dignity.
With additional text by Leo Balante
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