SENATE President and Senator-Judge Sherwin Gatchalian said on Wednesday the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte could be completed and a verdict reached before December, following a decision by the House prosecution panel to reduce its list of witnesses and speed up the presentation of evidence.
Gatchalian said the shortened prosecution presentation has significantly compressed the trial timetable, allowing the Senate impeachment court to devote longer hours to the proceedings and potentially hear two or three witnesses in a single day.
“That’s a big reduction in the timetable,” Gatchalian said in an ambush interview at the Senate on Wednesday.
He said the impeachment court now has about 10 full hearing days available under its revised schedule before the Senate shifts its focus to the 2027 national budget.
“Hopefully, the timetable that we see will be finished before December,”
Gatchalian said, while cautioning that the actual pace would still depend on the number and availability of defense witnesses.
The House prosecution earlier moved to reduce the number of witnesses it would present, with prosecutors saying they were targeting the completion of their evidence presentation by September. The impeachment court has consequently scheduled whole-day hearings in October to accelerate the trial.
Under the latest calendar, the impeachment court will hold hearings on selected dates in September, followed by whole-day proceedings from Oct. 1 through Oct. 15. The trial will then take a break to make way for congressional deliberations on the proposed 2027 national budget before resuming in November.
Gatchalian said, however, that the target remains dependent on the defense’s presentation after the prosecution completes its evidence.
“When you see it, the timetable changes. It depends on the prosecution, it depends on the defense, it depends on what they present,” he said.
Threshold issue
The timetable is also intertwined with a separate issue that could affect the eventual verdict: the number of votes required to convict or acquit Duterte.
The impeachment court is set to hear constitutional experts as amici curiae, or “friends of the court,” on Sept. 16 to help resolve the dispute over the voting threshold. Oral arguments by the prosecution and defense are scheduled for Sept. 23, after which the senator-judges are expected to vote on the issue.
Presiding Officer Francis Escudero had earlier ruled that 16 votes, or two-thirds of the Senate’s 24 members, are required to convict Duterte. Senator-Judge Erwin Tulfo challenged the ruling, raising questions over whether senators who cannot participate in the trial should still be counted in determining the two-thirds threshold.
Gatchalian said the court would first listen to the invited constitutional experts before deciding how to proceed.
“The preference is former chief justices, former Supreme Court justices,” he said, adding that the court is looking at three to five amici curiae.
The threshold dispute has assumed greater importance because four senator-judges are unable to participate in the trial for various reasons, prompting questions over whether the 16-vote requirement could effectively make conviction more difficult.
Sen. Raffy Tulfo said he would prefer to have the Supreme Court settle whether to retain the 16-vote threshold to convict Duterte.
Tulfo said he and other senator-judges will first hear differing opinions from the amici curiae, or friends of the court, before deciding how to proceed, but he said he preferred allowing the Supreme Court to settle the issue.
