Lifted from OPTIC POLITICS EDITORIAL | The Candle That Burned Out: The Collapse of Martin Romualdez’s Speakership OPTIC Politics | September 17, 2025 Power, in a democracy, is never permanent. It is borrowed, conditional, and answerable to the Constitution and the people. Yet Martin Romualdez believed otherwise. For three years, he built his speakership on the illusion of invincibility, mistaking political arithmetic for public trust. Today, that illusion has collapsed, and his resignation marks not just the fall of one man, but the implosion of an entire machinery of arrogance. Romualdez’s downfall was not sudden — it was the natural result of years of abuse. His speakership will be remembered as a textbook case of how not to lead a legislative chamber. Under his watch, budget insertions and flood-control scandals surfaced, billions in taxpayer money allegedly redirected and repackaged with suspicious precision. Congress, endowed by the Constitution with the power of the purse, wa...
