[An MCT Commentary]
I remember the first time I thought Loren Legarda was the real thing.
She was on television — sharp, controlled, asking the questions nobody else was asking.
This was a woman who covered the People Power Revolution as a reporter for RPN, who sat in front of a camera when the rest of the country was running toward EDSA.
She graduated cum laude from UP Diliman with a degree in broadcast communications, finished a master's degree at the National Defense College where she topped her class with gold medals, and then walked into the Senate in 1998 as the top vote-getter with over 15 million votes.
Her first term was not just talk — she authored the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, the Anti-Domestic Violence Act, the Overseas Absentee Voting Act. Real legislation.
The kind that actually protects people.
For a blogger like me who grew up believing that the right person in the right position could change something, Loren Legarda was an easy first faith.
I was wrong. And the longer I watched, the more I understood why.
THE WOMAN SHE STARTED AS
Before any of the politics, Loren Legarda was legitimately one of the most credible journalists in the Philippines.
She anchored The World Tonight on the reopened ABS-CBN alongside Angelo Castro Jr., hosted The Inside Story, and earned more than 30 journalism awards before she ever ran for public office.
She won the Benigno Aquino Award for Journalism in 1995 — named after the senator who was assassinated returning home to fight a dictatorship.
She knew what that name meant.
She was born into a family with deep roots in journalism and public service.
Her maternal grandfather was Jose P. Bautista, editor-in-chief of The Manila Times before Martial Law.
Her family's political history stretches back to the Malolos Congress.
This was not a woman who came to politics by accident.
She came from a lineage that understood what power was supposed to be for.
That context is crucial now. Because everything that came after has to be measured against it.
THE BUTTERFLY PATTERN
The "political butterfly" label is not something her critics invented. It is a pattern she built, one alliance at a time.
She ran for the Senate in 1998 under Lakas-NUCD-UMDP — the ruling party of Fidel Ramos.
In 2003, she left Lakas after Gloria Macapagal Arroyo broke her pledge not to run for president, and joined Fernando Poe Jr.'s coalition as an independent.
Then she aligned with the NPC. In 2009, she ran as Manny Villar's vice presidential running mate under the Nationalist People's Coalition — this was a man she had previously scrutinized in the Senate.
When asked if she was a political butterfly, she said she wasn't. She just kept flying to new flowers.
The VP bids were their own story.
She lost to Noli de Castro in 2004 by 881,722 votes and spent years protesting the result before the Supreme Court dismissed her case in 2008.
In 2010, she ran again as vice president, this time under Manny Villar, and placed third.
Twice she tried to reach Malacañang through the second door. Twice she failed.
What she did next tells you everything.
THE UNITEAM DECISION AND THE SON WHO CALLED HER OUT
In 2022, Loren Legarda ran under the UniTeam senatorial slate — the Marcos-Duterte coalition.
She finished second overall with 24.26 million votes, her best performance ever.
She won by going home to the Marcoses.
At the risk of being redundant, I will tell you that statement is not a small thing.
This is a woman who as a young journalist covered the tail end of Martial Law and the People Power Revolution that ended it.
Her grandfather's newspaper, The Manila Times, was among those censored under Marcos.
She received the Benigno Aquino Award. And in 2022, she walked onto the stage with the dictator's son and smiled for the cameras.
Imagine that.
Her own firstborn son, Lorenzo Legarda Leviste, could not bear it.
In an open letter published in May 2022, Lorenzo said he was "absolutely disgusted" by his mother.
He said she "spits in the faces of thousands of people whose lives were destroyed by the Marcoses."
He declared that she had "lost a son forever" because of the decision.
Lorenzo had been living in the United States since he was 18 years old.
The Marcos alliance apparently was the line he could not forgive even from across the Pacific.
Her younger son Leandro, on the other hand, published his own letter in support of her.
It is worth remembering who Leandro is. We will get to that.
THE ABS-CBN VOTE: “HEARTBROKEN” BUT ABSENT
On July 10, 2020, the House of Representatives committee killed ABS-CBN's franchise renewal in a 70-11 vote.
It was one of the most brazen attacks on press freedom in recent Philippine history.
This was the network that Loren Legarda anchored for years. The network where she built her career, her credibility, her public face.
She abstained.
Her stated reason was conflict of interest: she had filed her own ABS-CBN franchise renewal bill, and she said House rules prevented her from voting.
But House sources told Vera Files that the conflict-of-interest rule applied only to regular committee members — Legarda was an ex-officio member as Deputy Speaker and was not covered by the rule.
She chose to abstain anyway.
She later said she was "heartbroken" about ABS-CBN's closure.
She said the franchise "must be refiled."
She performed grief publicly.
But grief without action is just theater.
She was in that room. She could have voted. She didn't. 🤷🏾♂️
Now here is the part of the story that gets buried under the grief performance.
In May 2024 — three and a half years after ABS-CBN died in that committee room — Leandro Leviste's holding company purchased an 8.5 percent stake in ABS-CBN.
By June 2024, he had raised his stake to 10 percent, making him the second-largest ABS-CBN shareholder after the Lopez family, with his holdings valued at roughly ₱688.5 million.
The mother abstained while ABS-CBN was being killed. The son bought into it while it was on the floor, cheap.
The network her family declined to defend became the network her family now partly owns.
THE SOLAR PHILIPPINES ANGLE
This is the story that took me a long time to fully piece together, and I still do not think it has been told with the seriousness it deserves.
Leandro Leviste built Solar Philippines into one of the country's most high-profile renewable energy companies.
In 2019, during Senator Legarda's third Senate term, the Solar Para sa Bayan Corporation received a 25-year franchise from Congress to build distributable solar power systems nationwide.
Critics from the Anti-Trapo Movement questioned the "seemingly hasty" processing of that franchise, filing complaints against Legarda over the speed at which her Senate committee cleared the resolution.
Nothing formal came of those complaints then.
But in January 2026, the Department of Energy imposed a ₱24 billion fine on Solar Philippines Power Projects Holdings for failure to deliver on committed projects.
The DOE then filed a formal complaint against Leandro Leviste and five other Solar executives in May 2026.
Senator Legarda's response was to file a Senate resolution seeking a probe into the DOE's actions.
The mother is now presiding over the chamber — she was elected Senate President Pro Tempore in May 2026 — that could either investigate or shield her son from a ₱24 billion liability.
When reporters asked her about the conflict of interest, she declined to address questions.
Sound familiar?
THE DYNASTY SHE BUILT WHILE FILING ANTI-DYNASTY BILLS
This is the irony that I have to put in writing because it is almost too on the nose.
Senator Loren Legarda has now filed an anti-political dynasty bill seven times. Seven.
The bill has never passed.
It keeps getting filed. It keeps going nowhere.
Sixty-four percent of Filipinos support an anti-dynasty law according to Pulse Asia, and yet it never moves forward in a chamber where Legarda now holds the second-highest seat.
Meanwhile, the dynasty she has been building looks like this:
- Loren Legarda — Senate President Pro Tempore, fourth Senate term, having bounced from Senate to House and back to Senate using term limit rules as a revolving door
- AA Legarda (Antonio Agapito Legarda) — her brother, currently serving as Antique's lone district representative, having won a second term in 2025 with 210,491 votes — the same Antique seat Loren vacated when she returned to the Senate
- Leandro Leviste — her son, currently serving as Batangas 1st District Representative, with a reported net worth approaching ₱50 billion, chairman of Solar Philippines, now facing a ₱24 billion DOE fine
The Vera Files investigation published in March 2025 documented how AA Legarda ran on the name "Inday Loren" on the official candidate list — a name that voters in Antique associate with Loren herself, not with her brother — making it difficult for voters to know the difference.
She had to cut ties with previous allies in the province, including Governor Rhodora Cadiao, to clear the field for her brother.
The woman who files anti-dynasty bills is simultaneously managing a three-front family political empire across two provinces and the national Senate.
Her legislation was not hypocrisy by accident. It was hypocrisy as a brand.
THE MOST RECENT FLIP: MAY 2026
As I write this, there was a leadership coup in the Senate.
On May 11, 2026, the pro-Duterte bloc engineered a surprise shakeup that ousted the sitting Senate President and installed Alan Peter Cayetano.
Loren Legarda voted for Cayetano. In exchange, she was immediately elected Senate President Pro Tempore — the chamber's second-highest position.
This is at least her fourth major Senate leadership alignment shift in recent years.
When reporters asked her about it afterward, she evaded questions.
She has done this so many times now that the evasion itself has become the statement.
WHAT I GOT WRONG EARLY ON
I spent years giving Loren Legarda the benefit of the doubt because of the legislation.
The Climate Change Act. The Magna Carta of Women. The Anti-Trafficking law.
These are real bills. They protect real people.
But the pattern I kept seeing was not the occasional bad alliance choice.
It was the consistent subordination of every stated principle to what was good for Loren and Leandro.
The legislation was real, but it was also never the organizing logic. The organizing logic was always the family.
The ABS-CBN abstention was not about parliamentary procedure.
The UniTeam alliance was not about unity.
The seven anti-dynasty bills that never moved were not about reform.
The Senate probe into the DOE that could shield her son from a ₱24 billion fine is not about energy policy.
Each one is about power — held, transferred, and protected.
THE QUESTION I NOW ASK
I used to wonder when Loren Legarda became this way. I now think that is the wrong question.
The better question is whether she ever wasn't this way — and whether we just weren't paying close enough attention.
The journalism career that made her famous was built on a network, ABS-CBN, that her family later acquired a significant stake in.
The province she represented, Antique, had been tied to her family going back to her great-granduncle, who served as mayor of Sibalom.
Even the early reform credentials were built on top of a foundation that was always partly about family name and family position.
She chose Marcos in 2022. Her son Leandro supported that choice. Her other son Lorenzo disowned her for it.
The family fractured publicly over the decision.
And she went to the Senate anyway — and won bigger than she ever had before, with 24 million votes.
That number is the most honest thing in this whole story.
The voters knew. They watched the same pattern I watched. And 24 million of them said it was fine.
I am not writing this to tell you how to vote.
I am writing this because I lost my faith in Loren Legarda a long time ago, and I think it is worth saying out loud why — and being honest that part of that loss is on me.
I believed in someone because she looked like she believed in something.
She may have. Once.
But principles without the spine to hold them at cost are just talking points.
And in twenty-eight years of watching Loren Legarda, I have never once seen her hold a principle when it cost her something real.
That is the faith I lost. And I do not expect to get it back.
SOURCES
1. Loren says she's no political butterfly | GMA News Online
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/185793/loren-says-she-s-no-political-butterfly/story/
2. Loren Legarda fattens her dynasty - VERA Files
https://verafiles.org/articles/loren-legarda-fattens-her-dynasty
3. Legarda explains why she didn't participate in ABS-CBN franchise vote
https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/07/11/20/legarda-explains-why-she-didnt-participate-in-abs-cbn-franchise-vote
4. Legarda heartbroken over abstention on ABS-CBN franchise voting
https://politiko.com.ph/2021/10/21/i-spent-the-best-productive-years-of-my-life-in-that-station-legarda-heartbroken-over-abstention-on-abs-cbn-franchise-voting/
5. Son of Loren Legarda, "disgusted" at mother for running under UniTeam slate
https://kami.com.ph/politics/142334-son-loren-legarda-disgusted-mom-running-uniteam-slate-i-dont/
6. Leviste raises stake in ABS-CBN to 10%
https://www.philstar.com/business/2024/06/06/2360599/leviste-raises-stake-abs-cbn-10
7. Leviste buys 8.5% stake of ABS-CBN
https://business.inquirer.net/457141/leviste-buys-8-5-stake-of-abs-cbn
8. Leviste hikes ABS-CBN stake; inches closer to board seat
https://tribune.net.ph/2024/06/05/leviste-hikes-abs-cbn-stake-inches-closer-to-board-seat
9. Group questions 'hasty' processing of franchise for firm led by Legarda's son
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/money/companies/684476/group-questions-hasty-processing-of-franchise-for-firm-led-by-legarda-s-son/story/
10. DOE fines Leviste's Solar Philippines P24-B for failed commitments
https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/business/2026/1/14/doe-fines-leviste-s-solar-philippines-p24-b-for-failed-commitments-1151
11. DOE files complaint vs Leviste, 5 other solar firm execs
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1274539
12. Legarda files seventh bill on anti-political dynasty
https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2026/2/19/legarda-files-seventh-bill-on-anti-political-dynasty-1730
13. Legarda: Congressman AA's triumph is victory for Antique
https://lorenlegarda.com.ph/legarda-congressman-aas-triumph-is-victory-for-antique/
14. Loren Legarda returns to the Senate on her 4th term
https://lorenlegarda.com.ph/loren-legarda-returns-to-the-senate-on-her-4th-term-much-to-do-many-to-help/
15. Senate coup: Sotto out, Cayetano takes over
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2026/05/12/2527301/senate-coup-sotto-out-cayetano-takes-over
16. Shutdown of ABS-CBN broadcasting - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_ABS-CBN_broadcasting
17. Loren Legarda - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Legarda
18. 1998 Philippine Senate election - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Philippine_Senate_election
19. Case Digest: P.E.T. Case No. 003 - Legarda vs. De Castro
https://jur.ph/jurisprudence/digest/legarda-v-de-castro-42390
20. It's final: Loren loses election protest case vs Noli
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2008/02/20/45743/its-final-loren-loses-election-protest-case-vs-noli
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