MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano warned against rule bending in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte as he questioned Sen. Win Gatchalian's vote threshold for conviction.
Cayetano, who insisted that he is still Senate president, said Gatchalian affirmed the 16-of-24 vote threshold for conviction but also justified his supposed 12-of-24 election as Senate president pro tempore on June 3.
Cayetano said Gatchalian himself said the Constitution “states unequivocally” that two-thirds “of all the members of the Senate” are needed to convict an impeachable officer.
He said that because the Senate’s membership is “fixed at 24…the conviction threshold is 16 votes, and it will remain 16 votes regardless of how many senators attend the trial.”
“My instinct was to commend Senator Win Gatchalian when he said that indeed 16 [votes] are needed to convict an impeachable officer,” Cayetano said in Filipino in his Facebook livestream on June 12.
However, he said that Gatchalian’s bloc applied a different standard when it justified his supposed election as Senate president pro tempore with only 12 votes.
He said Rule II of the Senate Rules requires “a majority vote of all its members” to elect Senate officers.
Applying the same fixed 24-member Senate logic Gatchalian cited for impeachment conviction, the required majority would be 13 votes, not 12 out of the available 22.
Cayetano said the Gatchalian bloc’s shifting voting standards raise a deeper issue of “trust,” particularly on whether it will stand by the 16-vote threshold when the Senate proceeds with Duterte’s impeachment trial in July.
“Are we going to really have an impartial trial, or aayusin at luto na (manipulated)? Are we going to tell [people] the truth that it needs 16 [votes] to convict, or six senators would be removed so that it will just need 12?” he asked.
