A motion to lower the number of votes needed to convict Vice President Sara Duterte would clear the Senate impeachment court with just 10 affirmative ballots, according to the tribunal’s spokesman, Atty. Reginald Tongol.
The arithmetic turns on who will actually cast a vote when the question is settled. Presiding officer Sen. Francis Escudero will recuse himself from the tally because the disputed 16-vote requirement was his own July ruling, Tongol said. With four senators unable to take part and Escudero stepping aside, the panel drops to 19 voting members, and a bare majority of that number would carry the appeal.
Tongol cautioned that the margin offers no cushion. Should the count end in a deadlock — if an additional senator is absent, or if one of the four currently sidelined returns and the vote splits evenly — the motion collapses and Escudero’s original threshold survives.
The four senators kept from the proceedings are Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta, both jailed over nonbailable plunder cases; Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who has gone into hiding to evade an International Criminal Court warrant; and Loren Legarda, who is on extended medical leave, as reported by VERA Files.
Escudero fixed the bar at 16 on July 6, reasoning that the Constitution’s demand for the concurrence of two-thirds of all 24 senators translates literally to that figure. He grounded the ruling in a 2000 Supreme Court decision that treated 16 affirmative votes as a valid two-thirds concurrence in a treaty even when only 23 senators held office at the time. From the outset, he acknowledged that anyone objecting could mount a legal challenge.
Before the senator-judges decide, the court will convene a special session to hear from outside legal minds. It has designated retired chief justices Hilario Davide Jr., Artemio Panganiban and Reynato Puno, along with retired associate justice Adolfo Azcuna, as amici curiae. Davide and Azcuna both helped draft the 1987 Constitution. Tongol said the four were chosen for their independence and because none had recently spoken publicly on the threshold dispute, with weight given to their credentials and their published and authored rulings from their time on the high court.
During that session, the senator-judges are expected to press the experts on whether the base can lawfully be reduced, what bearing the missing senators have on the count, and whether final authority over the matter rests with the Senate or the Supreme Court.
Duterte herself has criticized the move to bring in the advisers. She argued that the 16-vote standard was adopted precisely to track the Constitution, and questioned why the court would revisit a figure it had already tied to the charter. “That threshold was decided in the first place to follow the Constitution. So, it means that now that the conversation has changed, it means they will change it. Why are we still talking about it if it is not going to be changed?” she said in Quezon City.
The Vice President also addressed the prosecution’s bid to summon her as a witness, saying she has not been formally notified. “I can’t answer that because there is no paper or document yet that says I have to appear as the witness for the prosecution,” she said.
