[ANALYSIS] Marcos’ shrinking influence in the legislative

The two men seated behind him during the 2025 SONA won't make a comeback on that stage this year. It's a testament to the political upheaval that has reshaped both chambers of Congress over the past year. When President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivers his fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) in end-July, he will face a legislative branch that has gone through turmoil in the past year, and he will continue to grapple with his waning — and sometimes underutilized — influence. On the surface, Congress’ turnaround rate on Marcos’ pet bills this year doesn’t paint a flattering picture. Excluding his inaugural SONA in 2022, this will be the first time he takes the podium with only one priority measure enacted that he can point to as an accomplishment. That means that out of 52 bills identified as a priority by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, only one — the resetting of the Bangsamoro elections — was signed into law. That is unlike in previous years, when anywhere from six to 21 pet bills hurdled the legislative branch by the time of his address to the Filipino public. The SONA, after all, is the biggest stage to tout the achievements of his administration. To be fair to Marcos, the legislative grind typically slows after the midterm elections, as a newly constituted Congress regroups and reassesses which priority bills are worth pushing to the finish line before the next elections usher in the President’s successor. For the part of the House, whose majority leader is no less than his son Sandro Marcos, 20 out of 51 pending pet bills hurdled the chamber in the past year, but all of them got stuck at the Senate. The low productivity rate at the upper chamber, however, stems from an unprecedented episode of chaos that Marcos was slow to contain. Senate The holdup of bills at the upper chamber took place under the short-lived but destructive Senate presidency of Alan Peter Cayetano. Virtually no legislative work was accomplished — no anti-dynasty bill, no freedom of information measure, not even the proposed abolition of the travel tax, a relatively easy win that could have earned Marcos goodwill among middle-class voters. During Cayetano’s weeks-long rule, triggered by a surprise coup, a gun fight broke out inside Senate premises, fugitive Bato dela Rosa escaped from Senate custody, the minority walked out from the session hall in protest, and Cayetano’s majority boycotted the session. It is uncommon in Philippine politics for the Senate president to be a rival of the President, but that’s what Cayetano has been for Marcos. The President’s recent challenges in keeping the Senate on his side have hardly been a surprise. His slate’s underperformance during the midterms — seen as a referendum on his presidency — resulted in more Duterte-allied politicians winning Senate seats instead of survey-favored administration candidates. The consequence is an aggressive Senate bloc ready to platform former bodyguards who claimed that top officials, including Marcos, received billions of pesos in kickbacks from public works projects. The Senate minority now has 11 members, a stark contrast from the two-member minority during the first half of the Marcos administration. House Malacañang’s logic has been straightforward: Marcos was the one who exposed flood control anomalies during his SONA last year, so he would not be dumb enough to do that if his hands were not clean. During that address, he uttered one of the punchiest soundbites of his presidency — “Mahiya naman kayo!” — an emotional warning against people who manipulate the budget for their personal gain. The two men seated behind him at the time suffered the consequences of the scandal: then-Senate president Chiz Escudero for the campaign donation he received from a top contractor in his province, and then-House speaker Martin Romualdez for his role in the passage of what critics described as “mangled” 2025 national budget. Cousin Romualdez, until his resignation last year, was an effective and efficient ally of the President. Congressmen had little to no complaints, funding poured in for their districts, most of Malacañang’s pet bills cleared the lower chamber, and one of them — the Maharlika Investment Fund — even passed in record time during the early years of the Marcos administration. Romualdez had the ears of the President, he was a companion to Marcos’ foreign trips, and he rallied the troops to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte for the first time in 2025, even if Marcos publicly insisted he had nothing to do with it. Romualdez’s successor Bojie Dy came from northern Luzon, a bailiwick of the Marcoses. While he is a party mate of the President, the strength of his ties to the President cannot match what the cousins had. Months into his post, Dy had to contend with growing dissatisfaction from the House’s second-largest bloc, the National Unity Party, which blamed the executive for bottlenecks in the release of district funds, and Dy for failing to effectively press Malacañang to address their concerns. Privately, some lawmakers, while insisting they had done nothing wrong, also bristled at Marcos’ SONA callout, saying it placed their actions under intense public scrutiny. The House, however, is still unlikely to turn its back on the President. Earlier this year, it swiftly dismissed an impeachment complaint against Marcos over his alleged involvement in the budget kickback scheme. Even so, his administration will continue to contend with outspoken lawmakers eager to seize on any perceived misstep — from figures such as Leandro Leviste and Edgar Erice to the Duterte bloc and the usual voices from the traditional opposition. Marcos is entering the lame-duck phase of his presidency, and the next two years will test whatever political capital he has left: first, whether he can marshal enough support to secure the conviction of a vice president out for blood, despite his apparent reluctance to acknowledge that her permanent disqualification would bolster his family’s political future; and second, whether he can persuade Congress to pass key bills that will ultimately define his legacy. – Rappler.com