THE PREACHER'S SON

He posted a video to the Jesus is Lord Church.

"Tutuparin po natin ang ating sagradong tungkulin sa ilalim ng ating Saligang Batas. We will be there."

Senator Joel Villanueva, announcing he would attend a special session if President Marcos calls one, speaking not in a press conference, not on the Senate floor, but to his father's congregation. The religious group founded by Eddie Villanueva. His audience, his home base, his shield.

And I became wary. Because he was saying everything I want to hear. Sacred duty. Constitutional obligation. We will be there. But having been tracking his pattern of behavior, attitude, statements, and actions for a while now, I cannot help but be afraid for what he is about to do.

Be careful with this one. That's all it says. Over and over.

Because here's the thing about that statement. Villanueva is counted among the senators in Alan Peter Cayetano's bloc, the group that boycotted Senate sessions, paralyzed the chamber, and refused to recognize the new majority and the leadership of Senator Sherwin Gatchalian. His bloc helped grind the Senate to a halt. Key bills stalled. Session days were lost. And now, after Marcos told them to get back to work and hinted at a special session, Villanueva steps forward, to his father's church, and says: we will fulfill our sacred duty.

The timing is worth sitting with.

I've been watching him long enough to know the pattern. The born-again branding. The humble Christian senator face. The carefully worded denials. The emotional press conferences. He's good at all of it.

But the record keeps interrupting the performance.

THE PORK BARREL THAT NEVER WENT AWAY

Back in 2008, Villanueva was a CIBAC party-list congressman. His ₱10 million in Priority Development Assistance Fund, pork barrel money, was allegedly coursed through a questionable NGO for an agricultural and livelihood project that, upon investigation, turned out to be a ghost project. Fictitious beneficiaries. No valid liquidation.

In November 2016, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales issued an order to dismiss Villanueva from public service. The findings were specific: grave misconduct, serious dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the interest of the service.

He was also declared perpetually disqualified from holding public office.

He never stepped down.

The Senate's legal counsel essentially handed him a shield, opining that the Ombudsman had no administrative disciplinary jurisdiction over senators. The dismissal order, fully final and executory, was never enforced. The Senate did nothing.

Then in 2019, after Ombudsman Morales retired and President Duterte installed Samuel Martires in her place, Villanueva's motion for reconsideration, which he had filed claiming his signature was forged, was quietly resolved in his favor. Not publicly announced. Not disclosed. Almost no one knew about it until Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla moved in October 2025 to enforce the original 2016 order.

When he ran for reelection in 2022, his PDAF record was barely remembered. He won handily.

Meanwhile, in June 2025, Janet Lim Napoles and others were convicted of graft in connection with the same broad PDAF scandal. Villanueva was never charged before the Sandiganbayan in that case.

Nakakatawa. Or nakakaiyak. I can't decide which.

If there is one thing Joel must do, it is to quit being a senator and honor the dismissal issued by Carpio-Morales. And if there is something the Ombudsman can still do, it is to overturn the secret reversal of Villanueva's case that Martires quietly buried in 2019. Justice has to be served before he can walk around as if he has not offended the law previously.

THEN CAME THE FLOOD CONTROL MONEY

As if the pork barrel case wasn't enough.

In September 2025, former DPWH Bulacan First District Engineering Office Head Henry Alcantara submitted a signed affidavit during a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing. In it, he named Villanueva as one of the politicians linked to a multibillion-peso kickback scheme involving flood control projects.

According to reports on the affidavit, Villanueva was tagged in ₱600 million worth of allocations, with ₱150 million identified as the alleged proponent's share.

Villanueva's response? He turned emotional at a Senate hearing and denied everything. He called it a setup, specifically designed to bring him down after he had condemned flood control anomalies himself.

The irony writes itself. He condemned the flood control mess, and now he's named in it.

Whether the allegations are true or not, that is for the courts and investigators to determine. But the pattern is the one that keeps nagging at me. A senator who consistently ends up adjacent to these things, who always has a denial ready, who always frames himself as the target rather than the beneficiary.

THE COACHING SESSION NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO SEE

Then there was June 2025.

A video clip, reportedly taken from the visitors' gallery of the Senate, surfaced during the Sara Duterte impeachment proceedings. In it, Villanueva, who publicly voted against Dela Rosa's motion to terminate the case, was seen coaching Senator Imee Marcos on how to interrupt Senator Risa Hontiveros.

He was heard on camera: "Pwede ka na magsalita, actually. Pwede mo na sabihin sa mic yung point of order para tumigil siya."

Lawyers and observers were blunt. Jesus Falcis said the video showed Villanueva coaching and goading Marcos to derail the proceedings. Dino de Leon called it a conspiracy to frustrate the impeachment case.

He voted against dismissal publicly. He helped derail the proceedings privately. He later said it was not planned.

VERA Files called him "your typical politico who has a characteristic aversion to accountability."

A netizen's description circulated online: wolf in sheep's clothing.

And this is the core problem. A senator who can apparently be persuaded, by Malacañang, by an ally, by whoever has something to offer in exchange for something, whether or not that exchange is ever proven, cannot be trusted on the floor. A senator whose position can be coached from the gallery, whose public vote and private action point in opposite directions, is not a senator serving the public. When institutional loyalty is suspected of being for sale, the institution itself becomes unreliable. And the people who suffer are not the senators. They never are.

THE DYNASTY THEY CALL AN ADVOCACY

The Villanueva political machine is a family operation.

His father, Eddie Villanueva, founder of the Jesus Is Lord Church, sits as a congressman representing CIBAC in the House. His brother Jonjon is mayor of Bocaue, Bulacan. His late sister Joni Villanueva Tugna was formerly mayor of the same town. Her husband Sherwin Tugna was formerly a congressman and is now vice mayor under his brother-in-law.

That's five family members with government positions attached to their names. The flood control allegations tied to Joel Villanueva are also rooted in Bulacan, the same province where his family holds political posts.

Eddie Villanueva's defense of this political arrangement was quoted directly: "Political dynasty is not applicable to our family. We are here because of our advocacy."

The advocacy, as far as I can track, has involved a pork barrel case pending for over a decade, a dismissed-but-not-enforced Ombudsman order, flood control kickback allegations, a covert coaching session during impeachment proceedings, and a reversal of a dismissal order quietly buried until someone with a different agenda dug it back up.

Ang husay ng PR.

THE REASON THE ALARM KEEPS GOING OFF

It's not that Joel Villanueva is the loudest or most aggressive trapo in the room. He's not. He knows how to play the mild-mannered, deeply principled senator. He speaks in measured tones. He invokes God when cornered. He cries in hearings.

The thing about him is precisely that softness. Because in politics, the ones who scream tend to announce themselves. The ones who whisper directions to someone else while on camera, those are the ones worth watching.

He speaks on record like a neutral. He operates off record like someone with debts to pay.

Which brings us back to that video. To the church. To the sacred duty speech. The special session that Marcos may call is a test of which senators show up, and for whom. Villanueva's announcement, made to a congregation, wrapped in constitutional language, is either a genuine return to duty, or a signal to someone that he is available.

The 2016 Ombudsman order should have ended his political career. A conviction for grave misconduct and serious dishonesty is not a minor administrative slap. But institutions failed to enforce it, the political timing worked in his favor, and voters who weren't told forgot.

He's been walking free on borrowed impunity ever since.

AND YET HERE WE ARE

Let's be honest about what's actually happening.

The reason Villanueva's statement matters isn't just procedural. There are people — analysts, opposition watchers, ordinary Filipinos terrified of what it looks like if Sara Duterte walks free from accountability — who are quietly hoping Villanueva flips. That he breaks from Cayetano's bloc. That he becomes the number that tilts the Senate away from anyone who would rehabilitate her or make space for her return.

And I get it. I genuinely do.

Sara Duterte is not a hypothetical threat. She is a documented one. The impeachment case, the death threat against Marcos and Robredo, the machinery still intact, the loyalists still active. So when people see a potential swing vote, they grab at it. Even if that vote belongs to Joel Villanueva.

But stop. Just stop for a second.

Is this what we are actually down to? Using a senator with a standing dismissal order, one who was found guilty of grave misconduct and serious dishonesty, who was declared perpetually disqualified from public office, who whispers coaching instructions during impeachment proceedings, who gets named in flood control kickback schemes and cries his way through the denial, as a tool to thwart a bigger threat?

Anong klaseng bansa meron tayo?

We are being asked to root for someone who should not legally be in that chamber, because the alternative is worse. We are being asked to accept borrowed impunity as a political resource. To treat a man who has not been made to answer for anything as a useful instrument, and then go back to our lives pretending the institution still means something.

This is the actual state of the Senate. Not just Joel Villanueva. The whole machine. Where the calculus is never "who is clean" but always "who is useful right now." We keep feeding it. Not out of stupidity. Out of desperation. Accountability gets deferred because there is always a bigger threat. Always a reason to wait. The waiting never ends.

We are a nation that has been exhausted into accepting lesser evils as strategy.

To thwart evil, we reach for evil masquerading as a senator.

What the actual fuck, right.