The Senate has no authority to use its own rules to change the number of votes the Constitution requires to convict an impeached official, according to Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, who said he no longer intends to take part in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
“In my humble view, the Senate cannot invoke its internal rules to rewrite a voting threshold prescribed by the Constitution,” the senator said in a statement released on the night of Monday, September 21.
His announcement comes as the impeachment court weighs whether senators who are not present at the proceedings, himself included, should be left out of the count when determining the votes needed to convict.
The detained lawmaker argued that the chamber’s power to craft rules covers only matters of procedure. “More fundamentally, the Senate’s rule-making authority is merely procedural, not constituent. An internal rule cannot amend, expand or override the substantive commands of the Constitution. As the legal maxim teaches, ‘A spring cannot rise higher than its source,'” he said.
Marcoleta identified two defects in how the trial is being handled: the effort to reduce the conviction threshold and the choice of Sen. Francis Escudero to preside. A threshold that strays from the Constitution’s explicit text, combined with a presiding officer of “doubtful constitutional validity,” would do fatal damage to the trial’s legitimacy and integrity, he cautioned.
“Any judgment rendered therefrom would be vulnerable to serious constitutional challenge,” Marcoleta said. “I therefore cannot lend my participation to such an infirm process as it may be construed as acquiescence.”
Marcoleta remains in detention on a plunder charge, for which bail is not available. The case centers on some P75 million in campaign contributions he allegedly failed to declare, money said to have funded his 2025 Senate bid.
