The Senate minority bloc has declared it will challenge any move to prevent the impeachment court from convening Monday afternoon, even as opposition senators acknowledged they may fall short of the votes needed to remove Vice President Sara Duterte from office.
Senator Erwin Tulfo said the bloc’s nine-member contingent is prepared to sit as senator-judges when the impeachment court opens at 3 p.m., and that any delay would be unacceptable given the level of public interest in the proceedings.
“There is no reason to delay … we have to convene as an impeachment court. We owe it to the public and everybody is waiting,” Tulfo said in a radio interview Sunday.
He framed the trial as an opportunity for the Vice President to respond directly to the allegations against her before the nation. “She can say ‘This is made up accusations by Congress, or by some quarters against me.’ She can explain herself. The entire country, whether it’s DDS or the opposition, they want to hear that,” Tulfo said.
The nine senators aligned with the minority — Tulfo and his brother Senator Raffy Tulfo, along with Senators Vicente Sotto III, Paolo Benigno Aquino IV, Sherwin Gatchalian, Risa Hontiveros, Panfilo Lacson, Manuel Lapid, and Francis Pangilinan — are well below the number needed to convict and permanently bar Duterte from holding public office.
The majority side that voted to oust Sotto as Senate president on May 11 includes Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Ronald dela Rosa, Imee Marcos, Christopher Go, Robinhood Padilla, Rodante Marcoleta, Jinggoy Estrada, Joel Villanueva, Francis Escudero, Pia Cayetano, Mark Villar, Camille Villar, and Loren Legarda. Senators Joseph Victor Ejercito and Juan Miguel Zubiri abstained. Dela Rosa has not been seen since Sotto’s removal.
The impeachment court is being convened just days after the Senate reorganization that displaced Sotto and, with him, Lacson as chair of the blue ribbon committee — the panel that had been probing flood control projects implicating Estrada, Villanueva, and Escudero as primary incumbent senators. Former Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. is currently detained on related malversation charges.
New Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano has formally notified all 23 senators of Monday’s session, directing them to be present at the Session Hall and to wear their robes in keeping with the solemnity of the proceedings and the chamber’s Rules of Procedure on Impeachment Trials.
“Your presence and cooperation are essential to the proper and orderly conduct of these proceedings,” Cayetano wrote in a letter circulated to each senator’s office.
Tulfo, who will be sitting as a senator-judge in an impeachment trial for the first time, said the minority bloc would not stand by if procedural maneuvers were used to block the court from opening. “If somebody tries to block it, we will question … It has to push through, even if it’s 10 p.m. or 12 midnight, we will all wait for it to start,” he said.
