In discussing what to do, there is too much attention being paid to the karmic pleasure of denying the majority the chance to change the rules to allow senators not just to attend sessions and hearings virtually but to vote as well. Just because the Senate denied one of its former members, now Mamamayang Liberal party list Rep. Leila de Lima, that privilege doesn’t mean it should be off the table now, even knowing full well it might fatally affect the chances of a guilty verdict on the Veep (I am assuming the evidence is so strong, a trial will make conviction inevitable as it did with former Chief Justice Renato Corona). The law says there are offenses so grave that even as a trial takes place, the accused has to be behind bars. But there is also the principle that you are innocent until proven guilty. To my mind, a legislator charged with an unbailable offense should have the right to be brought to their chamber to attend sessions and even committee hearings. For all anyone cares, they can be brought in handcuffs and in orange jumpsuits, there to change into their work clothes until it’s time to bring them back to jail in handcuffs.

This is because until deprived of office by conviction, they remain legislators and have an obligation to serve. Does this mean you run the risk of the ridiculous sight of senators charged with offenses similar to those in the articles of impeachment against the Veep being asked to render judgment? Yes, and the sight of the charged judging the impeached is one the public has to see unfolding day by day because an impeachment trial, after all, is one in which not just the accused, but the Senate as an institution, is in the dock.

Why not have the accused senators—and accused representatives—who are brought from jail to the Senate or the House for their daily grind show up in prisoners’ jumpsuits? And if they’re out on bail, why not just put a big “B” sticker on them, front and back? It will remind everyone of the kind of legislators who end up elected. It will permanently—and justly—qualify every motion they make, statement they utter, and vote they take. It does not disenfranchise the voters who elected them but reminds the voters of the choices they made.

Shifting from the Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano majority to create a new Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian majority—it seems this is what people are waiting for with bated breath—simply provides the Senate a way out of the political, moral, and even procedural dead-ends it is in. It could offer Legarda and Escudero a redemption of sorts, but only to the extent that it would allow the Senate to return to a kind of normality: speculation as to whether it might improve their chances with cases they might face is speculative, and there are too many barriers to an outright deal being easy to swing.

The Cayetano majority, as it stands, has turned the Senate into a circular firing squad and has given power to some of the most unpleasant people in our political life: Sen. Rodante Marcoleta is Exhibit Number One. On that score alone, wanting to bolt the Cayetano majority is understandable. Everything else—impeachment, committees, cases—will depend on how things unfold. Everyone, including the Senate itself, gets some breathing room.

If the current majority holds, however, there should no longer be any inhibitions against throwing the book at as many senators as possible, and rather than keep them away, let them attend—in prisoners’ garb. Whether putting on their red impeachment robes or holding press conferences or simply insulting each other on the floor, they can do so with some in civilian clothing and the rest in prison wear.

At a certain point, someone will run to the Supreme Court to petition it to order detention without attendance or to decide that detention is no barrier to attendance and that it is cruel and unusual punishment to compel a detained senator to wear a prison uniform to work. If only this were happening last December and not now, the court might surprise us. Public feeling was so intense that lawmakers experienced social ostracism unmatched since 2001 and before that, 1985 to 1986. Fear of contagion for justices and bureaucrats might just stimulate decisions and actions opposed to letting things slide.