MANILA — Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio’s camp is considering taking the Senate impeachment court’s revised conviction threshold to the Supreme Court, insisting that the Constitution requires the concurrence of two-thirds of the entire Senate membership and not merely senators able to participate in the final vote.
The warning of a possible judicial challenge came after the impeachment court on Wednesday overturned its earlier interpretation fixing the conviction threshold at 16 votes and ruled that only senators who are legally and factually capable of participating in the proceedings will form the basis for computing the required two-thirds vote.
The court approved the revised interpretation by a 13-1 vote, with six senator-judges declining to participate. The ruling could reduce the number of votes needed to convict Duterte-Carpio depending on how many senators remain eligible to participate when judgment is rendered.
Duterte-Carpio spokesperson Paolo Panelo assailed the decision and raised the possibility of seeking Supreme Court intervention.
“Lokohan na ‘tong nangyayari at kaya nga sila posibleng umakyat sa Korte Suprema,” Panelo said.
Panelo maintained that the wording of the Constitution is explicit in requiring two-thirds of all senators for an impeachment conviction.
“Malinaw naman ‘yung Konstitusyon. Two-thirds of all members. Hindi naman two-thirds of all members present. Hindi two-thirds of all members that are not incarcerated. Hindi naman two-thirds of all members that are able to vote. ‘Di ba? Malinaw. Two-thirds of all members,” he added.
Under the impeachment court’s revised interpretation, senators who are detained, suspended, missing, medically incapacitated or otherwise legally or factually unable to participate may be excluded from the denominator used to calculate the two-thirds requirement.
The issue arose amid the inability of several senators to regularly participate in the impeachment proceedings because of detention, health concerns or other circumstances affecting their availability.
Before the court decided the threshold itself, senator-judges voted 13-6-1 to reject a bid by Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano to prevent the court from reopening the issue.
Meanwhile, Duterte-Carpio’s defense team said a Supreme Court challenge remains a “real possibility,” although it would continue participating in the impeachment trial.
Defense counsel and spokesperson Michael Poa said the legal team would respect the senator-judges’ ruling while preserving its right to pursue available legal remedies.
“I do not want to say anything against the court. ‘Yan po ang naging pasya ng senator-judges. We have to respect that, but that doesn’t mean we do not have legal remedies,” Poa said.
He said the possibility and timing of bringing the dispute before the Supreme Court would have to be discussed with Duterte-Carpio.
“‘Yung pag-akyat sa Supreme Court is a real possibility. As to when, we will have to discuss with our client… Everything is on the table,” he said.
Poa said the ruling would not substantially alter the defense team’s strategy in the impeachment proceedings: “Obviously, I can’t say I’m overly overjoyed or happy about it… That’s part of a trial, and sa atin, there are always legal remedies available, so it’s not as if we will lose sleep over this.”
He said the defense would continue participating in the trial but would place on record that its actions are being undertaken with reservations over the threshold ruling.
“The best we can do right now is to do our job well as defense counsel, but also put on record that whatever we do will be ad cautelam, meaning without prejudice to further remedies,” Poa said.
“It [the decision on the voting threshold] hasn’t even changed our strategy one bit except that we have to put things ad cautelam lang,” he said. “It hasn’t changed our game plan. Tuloy-tuloy pa rin naman kami at alam pa rin naman namin ‘yung gagawin namin.”/PN
