Alan Cayetano – ellen tordesillas

Senators fight for survival, to hell with public accountability

Published by Ellen on October 5, 2025

Sen. Alan Cayetano, Sen. Pia Cayetano, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, and other senators at the start of Senate plenary session. Photo by Bullit Marquez for VERA Files.

As I write this column Sunday afternoon, the latest information I got was that Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano does not have 11 senators for his Senate presidency bid that would convince the Villar brother-sister team to defect and complete a change of leadership.

Rumors have been swirling the past few days about the unrest in the Senate brought about by the horrifying revelations in the Ping Lacson-led Blue Ribbon Committee investigating anomalies in flood control projects that resulted in government losses reaching trillions of pesos (that’s 12 zeros). At least three incumbent and two former senators have been named. Names of some members of the House of Representatives have also been mentioned, notably former House speaker Martin Romualdez and resigned Bicol Ako party list representative and former chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Zaldy Co.

China’s concept of setting side sovereignty dispute for joint exploration of Spratlys

Published by Ellen on July 31, 2017

Asked during his press conference last Wednesday when the talks about the joint exploration in Philippine territory that is also being claimed by China and other countries started, Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano recalled the meeting of the late Deng Xiaoping with then President Corazon Aquino.

Meeting of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and Pres. Corazon Aquino in Beijing in April 1988. Photo from People’s Daily online

In that meeting, Deng suggested to set aside the issue of sovereignty on the Spratlys because that won’t be resolved in their lifetime. He suggested joint development.

Cayetano assured the public that the joint exploration they would be entering with the Chinese will not violate the Constitution and cited the Malampaya oil project in Palawan which is being operated by Shell, a British–Dutch multinational oil and gas company.

Foreign secretary, envoy belie Duterte account of alleged Xi Jinping’s threat of war

Published by Ellen on May 23, 2017

Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano during President Duterte’s Moscow visit. Malacañang photo.

Newly-installed Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said he has been in all the bilateral meetings between President Duterte and China’s President Xi Jinping and he has not witnessed any threat of war uttered by the Chinese President.

Philippine Ambassador to China Chito Sta. Romana, who has worked and lived in China as a journalist before he was recruited to the foreign service, said in a TV interview, “The whole idea…therefore that China was bullying us and threatening us just doesn’t pass.”

What does that make of President Duterte, a liar?

Why it’s finally Cayetano at DFA?

Published by Ellen on May 14, 2017

Incoming foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano has been a regular part of Pres. Duterte's delegation in all the latter's foreign trips. This Malacañang photo was taken on board the presidential plane to Malaysia. — Incoming foreign secretary Alan Peter Cayetano has been a regular part of Pres. Duterte’s delegation in all the latter’s foreign trips. This Malacañang photo was taken on board the presidential plane to Malaysia.

The appointment of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano as foreign secretary is an indication that the Duterte administration is feeling the heat of a negative international image and needs somebody who can passionately defend the President’s human rights record as what the senator did last week before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

No one among the foreign service officers would be brash enough to counter the antipathy that Duterte has elicited with his “Fuck u U.N.” and “Fuck u E.U.”

Malacañang needs someone who can say with conviction that white is black and black is white just like what the incoming secretary said when he declared that under Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign, “drug personalities have been arrested. Arrested your Excellencies not killed.”

Cayetano’s Leni remark shows he is not “in” in Duterte’s power group

Published by Ellen on May 31, 2016

Signing of NP-PDP Laban alliance. Photo by Mindanews.

After Congress, acting as National Board of Canvassers, declared last Friday Rodrigo Duterte of PDP-Laban as winner in the presidential contest and Leni Robredo of the Liberal Party for the vice-presidential race in the May 9 elections, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, Duterte’s running mate, told media that a cabinet position awaits Robredo.

“Mayor Duterte is reviewing every day names and positions [in the Cabinet], and I think from Day 1 he has been thinking about what job can be given the Vice President-elect,” Cayenato said adding that the position to be given to Robredo would be “tailored to what we heard from her during the campaign that she would like to handle.”

Robredo had said during the campaign that she would be interested in a cabinet position that involved lifting the people from poverty.

The following day, in a press conference with Cayetano beside him (also in attendance was Peace Process Secretary Jesus Dureza and senator-elect Manny Pacquiao), Duterte said Robredo “never entered my mind,” in the forming of his cabinet.

Gutter talk in the Senate is good

Published by Ellen on January 24, 2013

JPE. Thanks to Yahoo for this photo by Voltaire DomingoNPPA Images

Of course, what has been going on in the Senate the past weeks is disgusting.

But it is good that it is happening.

Alan Peter Cayetano standing up to Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile

If the controversy over the discriminatory distribution of Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile of the Senate Christmas loot – P1.6 million for the 18 senators and P250,000 for the four whom JPE does not like namely Senators Miriam Santiago, Antonio Trillanes IV, Pia Cayetano and Alan Cayetano- the public would not have known how they are skewered by the people they are spending billions on supposedly to serve them.

If Enrile didn’t become petty and arrogant and gave all the 22 senators, even including himself, the same amount, we would not have known that they are wallowing in excess funds while millions of Filipinos survive in a hand-to-mouth existence.