By el Amigo
MANILA — The Senate impeachment court on Wednesday overturned its earlier ruling requiring 16 votes to convict Vice President Sara Duterte, ruling that the two-thirds requirement will instead be based on senators who are legally and factually able to participate when judgment is rendered.
The court voted 13-1 to grant Senator-Judge Erwin Tulfo’s appeal seeking to revisit the July 6 ruling of Presiding Officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero, which had set 16 votes as the conviction threshold based on the Senate’s full 24-member composition. Six senator-judges did not participate in Wednesday’s vote.
Under the new ruling, senators who are detained or suspended, legally barred from performing their duties, physically or medically incapacitated, beyond the Senate’s coercive authority, or otherwise similarly unable to participate may be excluded from the voting base.
“The phrase ‘all members of the Senate’ shall refer to those members who, at the time of the vote, remain legally and factually capable of participating in the proceedings,” Escudero said in reading the ruling.
Escudero cast the lone dissenting vote but said he would implement the decision in subsequent proceedings.
The ruling does not immediately establish a new numerical threshold. The court must first determine, based on sufficient and competent evidence, which senators qualify for exclusion.
The court also ruled that any fractional result in computing two-thirds must be rounded up. Thus, if the final denominator were 20 senators, two-thirds would be 13.33, requiring 14 votes for conviction.
Escudero stressed that the decision applies only to Duterte’s impeachment trial and does not amend the rules for future impeachment courts.
The ruling followed two weeks of review, including submissions from amici curiae and oral arguments by the prosecution and defense on the constitutional meaning of “all the Members of the Senate.”
ia/xf
