The Supreme Court’s refusal to entertain a teacher’s petition over the Senate quorum question should not be read as a rejection of the position that 12 senators can lawfully convene the chamber, former Senate president Vicente Sotto III argued on Thursday.
Sotto was responding to a wave of online commentary from backers of Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, who portrayed the dismissal as vindication of their side in the deadlock over who legitimately leads the Senate. He countered that the tribunal had simply declined to wade into the matter, not weighed in against the 12-member count.
“Some people misunderstand it. The petition is not justiciable, therefore no need for SC to take it up,” he told reporters in a Viber message.
He accused those framing the outcome as a defeat for the 12-senator camp of distorting what the court actually did. “Daming wishful thinking trying to fool people into thinking na mali ang 12 of 23 (There is a lot of wishful thinking trying to fool people into believing that 12 of 23 is wrong),” Sotto said.
At the heart of the row is the June 3 session of the 20th Congress, when a dozen senators pressed ahead with proceedings over the objections of the rival bloc, which maintains that a quorum requires 13 members. Those proceedings produced leadership changes that have since been acknowledged by the House of Representatives and Malacañang.
The legal footing for the 12-senator position has rested partly on Avelino v. Cuenco, the 1949 Supreme Court decision invoked by Senator Sherwin Gatchalian to argue that a quorum can be established with fewer than a majority of the full membership under particular conditions.
