Senate court rejects Cayetano bid to block impeach threshold vote
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano failed Wednesday to stop the Senate impeachment court from voting on whether to revise the 16-vote threshold for convicting Vice President Sara Duterte.
Senator-judges voted 13-6, with one abstention, to reject Cayetano’s challenge and allow the threshold question to proceed.
“With 13 affirmative votes, six negative votes, one abstention, the appeal is lost,” Presiding Officer Chiz Escudero said.
The vote was not yet a decision on how many votes would be required to convict Duterte. Instead, it settled Cayetano’s attempt to prevent the impeachment court from taking up the threshold question at all.
Cayetano had raised a point of order arguing that the issue should have been settled at the start of the trial because it involved the court’s jurisdiction.
He urged the impeachment court to leave the constitutional question to the Supreme Court rather than reinterpret the threshold midway through the proceedings.
Cayetano warned that changing the number of senators used as the base for computing the two-thirds requirement could produce the equivalent of a “mistrial.”
He and Sen. Pia Cayetano had also said they would not participate in a vote on the threshold itself because they believe the Supreme Court should resolve the issue.
Escudero rejected that position and allowed the impeachment court to decide whether Sen. Erwin Tulfo’s motion to reconsider the threshold should proceed.
Thirteen of the 20 senator-judges present backed Escudero’s ruling.
Still before the impeachment court is Tulfo’s bid to exclude four senators who have been absent from the trial from the base used to calculate the two-thirds vote required for conviction.
Escudero had ruled at the opening of the trial that 16 votes were needed to convict Duterte, interpreting the Constitution’s requirement of “two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate” as referring to the chamber’s full 24-member roster.
Tulfo’s motion asks the court to reconsider that interpretation in light of senators who are not participating in the proceedings.
If the court adopts a smaller denominator, the number of votes required for conviction could also fall.
The senator-judges are now expected to vote separately on that question.
The impeachment court had set Sept. 23 for oral arguments and deliberation on the disputed threshold after hearing differing interpretations from retired Supreme Court justices invited as amici curiae, or friends of the court. — with Cristina Chi
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