The Senate impeachment court’s new voting formula changes which senators will be counted in determining the verdict in Vice President Sara Duterte’s trial, but does not alter the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote, Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian and Senator-judge Risa Hontiveros said Wednesday, Sept. 23.
Gatchalian, who voted to overturn the court’s earlier fixed 16-vote interpretation, said the issue before the senator-judges was the voting base when some members are unable to participate, not whether the Constitution’s two-thirds requirement should be lowered.
“The constitutional requirement of two-thirds remains. The question before the Court was which senators are counted in the base when some are unable to participate,” he said.
The impeachment court earlier adopted a new controlling rule under which only senators who remain legally and factually capable of participating at the time of the verdict will form the denominator for computing the required two-thirds vote.
Gatchalian said the change does not determine Duterte’s fate and applies equally whether the votes being counted favor conviction or acquittal.
“Ang aking boto ay batay sa prinsipyo, hindi sa sinumang senador o sa nasasakdal (My vote was based on principle, not on any senator or on the respondent),” he said.
Hontiveros, meanwhile, said the institution should not be rendered powerless simply because some senator-judges cannot take part in the final vote.
“The absence of a number of senators in an impeachment trial should not paralyze and render helpless the entire institution, and the Filipino people we represent,” she said in explaining her position on the threshold.
“Beyond discussions about denominators, fractions, and rounding up and down, ang dapat malaman: Sino ba ang nandito sa korte, at may kakayahang gumanap sa ating tungkulin (What should be determined is: Who is here in court and capable of performing our duty)?” the senator added.
Hontiveros also warned against treating absence as a way to avoid taking a position on the case.
“Hindi din po pwede na sadyaing wag sumipot sa araw ng botohan. Wala pong abstain by absence (One cannot deliberately stay away on voting day. There is no abstention by absence),” she said.
The senator noted that the impeachment rules require each senator, when called, to answer either “guilty” or “not guilty.”
“Voting is a duty, not an option,” Hontiveros said.
Both senators also cited the views presented by the impeachment court’s amici curiae, or friends of the court, in arriving at their positions on how the constitutional phrase “two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate” should operate when some members cannot participate.
Gatchalian said the amici helped the court look beyond the constitutional text and consider the purpose of the impeachment process and fairness to all parties.
Hontiveros said the ultimate objective should be to preserve the Senate’s ability to discharge its constitutional accountability function without allowing unavoidable absences — or deliberate non-participation — to derail a verdict.
“Let us choose to empower, and breathe life into the Constitution,” she said.
Under the new court ruling, the remaining eligible senators will form the denominator for computing the two-thirds requirement, with any fractional result rounded up to the next whole vote. The rule applies only to Duterte’s impeachment trial and will not bind future impeachment courts.PNA
