Defense counsel lawyer Sheila Sison on Wednesday placed on record Vice President Sara Duterte’s reservations over the Senate impeachment court’s ruling revising the voting threshold for conviction, stressing that the vice president’s participation in the proceedings will be ad cautelam and that the defense reserves the right to pursue all legal remedies available under the Constitution and law.
The Senate impeachment court on Wednesday overturned its earlier interpretation requiring a fixed 16 votes to convict Duterte, ruling instead that the constitutionally required two-thirds vote will be computed based on senators who remain legally and factually capable of participating when judgment is rendered.
The ruling does not remove the two-thirds requirement under the Constitution. Instead, it changes the number of senators included in the denominator when determining the votes needed for conviction. Any resulting fraction will be rounded up to the next whole vote.
The court earlier interpreted the constitutional requirement of two-thirds of all 24 senators as requiring 16 votes to convict. The new ruling excludes senators who are legally or physically unable to participate under specified circumstances, with the remaining qualified members forming the voting base.
Sison, in her manifestation before the Senate, invoked the Supreme Court’s ruling in Duterte v. House of Representatives, emphasizing that while impeachment takes place in a political environment, it remains a constitutional process bound by the requirements of the Constitution.
“The process of impeachment is a constitutional and therefore legal process that takes place within a political environment,” Sison said.
She also cited the Court’s statement that the sui generis nature of impeachment “does not convert it to a purely political process isolated from the requirements of the Constitution as a whole.”
Sison stressed that the constitutional principle that public office is a public trust requires accountability processes to follow the procedures laid down by the Constitution.
“Those who participate in this process are as accountable to our people as those who are made the subject of impeachment,” she said.
The defense counsel also cited the Supreme Court’s authority to review acts committed with grave abuse of discretion, regardless of the political outcome of an impeachment proceeding.
Sison said she was not asking the Senate tribunal to take mandatory judicial notice of the Supreme Court decision, noting that, in the defense’s view, the ruling is already subject to mandatory judicial notice under Rule 129 of the Rules of Court.
She also cited Article 8 of the Civil Code, which provides that judicial decisions applying or interpreting the law form part of the legal system.
Sison emphasized that Duterte does not seek to evade accountability or the outcome of the impeachment proceedings.
“Let it be clear that the respondent does not shrink from accountability, nor does she fear the outcome of this impeachment trial,” she said.
“What she asks for is nothing spectacular from this court, only the most essential and basic guarantees due to every individual-fairness and impartiality,” Sison added.
The defense, however, formally placed on record its reservations as the Senate proceeds with the trial.
“We therefore put on record that even as we understand that this tribunal will proceed as it deems fit, we nonetheless are constrained to place on record that the respondent’s participation, or any participation that the respondent will have in this trial, ay may tahasang pag-iingat, or with ad cautelam, and that she reserves every right to exhaust all legal remedies available under the laws and Constitution,” Sison said.
She said the defense’s position was anchored on the principles of a democratic institution and every citizen’s right to be heard before an impartial tribunal.
The Senate’s ruling came after senator-judges rejected an appeal seeking to stop the court from reopening the threshold issue. The court subsequently voted 13-1, with six senator-judges not participating, to overturn the earlier fixed 16-vote interpretation.
