MANILA, Philippines — House of Representatives' prosecutor and Akbayan Party-list Rep. Chel Diokno on Wednesday warned that keeping in the voting base senators who are legally unable to act as judges could result in an “acquittal by default” for Vice President Sara Duterte.
Diokno made the argument before the Senate impeachment court as he opposed automatically using the full 24-member Senate as the denominator for the two-thirds vote required for conviction.
“Yes, the Constitution deliberately makes conviction harder by imposing the two-thirds requirement. But making it harder is not the same as making it depend on senators who are not judges, or who are incapable of acting as judges,” he said.
The lawmaker argued that senators who did not take on their robes as impeachment judges or were legally barred from performing their duties because of detention or suspension cannot hear the evidence, deliberate, and vote. “Their inability to participate is beyond dispute, and yet if the denominator is fixed at 24, conviction would always require 16 votes.
This is absurd,” Diokno said. “That would be tantamount to an acquittal by default — a failure to arrive at the threshold number, caused not by the judgment of the incapacitated senators, but by their mere inclusion in the denominator,” he added.
The impeachment court is reconsidering the earlier stance of presiding officer Sen. Francis Escudero that 16 votes, or two-thirds of all 24 senators, are required to convict Duterte, after Sen. Erwin Tulfo sought reconsideration.
The court heard four amici curiae last week before the prosecution and defense presented oral arguments.
Retired Chief Justices Artemio Panganiban, Reynato Puno and Hilario Davide Jr. took differing approaches but said the number required for conviction need not always remain at 16, while retired Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna argued that all sitting senators should be counted.
The senator-judges are expected to resolve whether to sustain or overturn the 16-vote ruling after considering the arguments.
Senator-judge Panfilo Lacson called out both the prosecution and the defense for what he described as “misleading statements” during their oral arguments on the threshold needed to convict Vice President Sara Duterte.
In his manifestation, Lacson clarified that his remarks were not questions but observations regarding what he considered potentially inaccurate information presented by both sides.
Lacson first addressed Diokno over his statement that all four amici curiae agreed that the 16-vote threshold was not absolute.
"Number one, regarding the prosecution—honorable Congressman Diokno, with all due respect—you stated that all four amici curiae agree that the 16 is not absolute. I disagree, because Justice Azcuna was very emphatic: 'All means all.' So, that is one point,” Lacson said.
Lacson then turned to the defense's discussion of the Senate's handling of the impeachment case against former Chief Justice Renato Corona.
He agreed with Defense counsel Michael Poa that there were only 23 senators at the time because then-Senator Benigno Aquino III had been elected president.
However, the senator stressed that the threshold for conviction remained at 16 votes.
Lacson also clarified that although two-thirds of 23 senators would mathematically amount to 15.33 votes, the figure was rounded up to 16.
Thus, he said the Senate did not lower the required number of votes from 16 to 15.
“We didn’t lower it, nor did we touch the ‘16’—we couldn’t touch it because 15.3 was still considered 16 at the time,” he added.
