FORMER Senate president Franklin Drilon dismissed as wrong and baseless Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano’s claims that reversing the impeachment court’s earlier ruling requiring 16 votes for conviction in the middle of the trial of Vice President Sara Duterte would result in a mistrial.
Drilon said the June 6 ruling of Presiding Officer Francis Escudero may still be appealed before the entire impeachment court.
“There is no basis for the claim of a mistrial,” Drilon said in an interview with radio dzBB over the weekend.
Cayetano earlier warned that changing the earlier ruling, which set the conviction threshold at 16 votes, or two-thirds of the Senate’s full 24-member membership, could lead to a mistrial.
In his previous Facebook livestream, Cayetano said that he would not want to start from scratch after 26 days of the trial had already passed should proceedings be deemed unfair.
“I don’t want to have a mistrial. I don’t want all the work that has been done in this trial to go to waste,” he said.
“Fairness dictates that whatever your rules are at the beginning, those are your rules at the end,” he added.
At the start of Duterte’s trial, Escudero ruled that 16 votes are required to convict the vice president, following the “two-thirds of all senators” ascribed in the 1987 Constitution.
But, with three senators not able to attend the trial from the beginning due to legal battles, Senator-Judge Erwin Tulfo appealed to revisit the voting threshold.
Drilon said that Escudero deliberately did not structure his ruling as final in anticipation of potential legal challenges and to allow the Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue, considering the absence of several senator-judges.
“A mistrial? That’s incorrect. First of all, Senator Escudero’s ruling can be appealed to the impeachment court — to the 24 senators, or however many there are — who constitute that court. That’s why his ruling is not set in stone,” Drilon said.
“In fact, he acknowledges that an appeal can be made to the Supreme Court en banc; therefore, the claim of a mistrial is baseless,” he added.
Drilon said that it is up to the senator-judges whether to adopt the opinions of the former chief justices that the two-thirds vote is not permanently fixed at 16.
Three retired chief justices invited as amici curiae, or friends of the court, have since expressed the view that the two-thirds threshold should be based on the number of senators legally qualified and able to vote, rather than being permanently fixed at 16.
Drilon said that the opinions of the former magistrates were advisory and that it remained within the discretion of the senator-judges whether to adopt them.
“Whether or not the senators will follow those opinions is for them to decide,” he said.
The former justice secretary said the Constitution gives the Senate the “sole power to try and decide” impeachment cases.
“I keep saying this over and over: the Constitution states that the Senate shall have the sole power to try and decide. The phrase ‘sole power’ means that only the Senate has the authority to try and decide an impeachment case,” Drilon said.
He acknowledged that either party could question the impeachment court’s interpretation of the constitutional phrase “all the members of the Senate” before the Supreme Court.
However, Drilon said it would ultimately be up to the high court to determine whether it should intervene or treat the matter as a political question exclusively entrusted to the Senate.
“Whether or not the Supreme Court will intervene is within its discretion. The Supreme Court could say that we will not intervene because that is a political question, and the Constitution clearly provides that the Senate shall have the sole power to try and decide,” he said.
