Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro has admitted that the ideal scenario for the prosecution in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte is to get 16 or more conviction votes.
She expressed her hope as the Senate Impeachment Court allowed a lower minimum vote requirement to convict the vice president, if some senator-judges will be absent on the day of promulgation.
Luistro spoke in a press briefing on Thursday, wherein she was asked if the prosecution will be okay with getting a number lower than 16, if less than 24 senators will appear on judgement day.
According to Luistro, lead public prosecutor for the trial, getting at least 16 votes, no matter how many senator-judges are present, will make issues about a lower conviction requirement irrelevant.
‘Objection, Your Honor. Speculative,’ Luistro joked after being asked about the topic.
‘Nevertheless, of course, that is in the mindset of the prosecution already, because we cannot stop that people who were unhappy with the ruling of the impeachment court yesterday,’ she recalled.
‘By [the] time senator-judges cast their vote on the verdict, whether conviction or acquittal, [they] will continue to raise questions,’ she said.
‘And I think, the best way will be – We hope that if there will be a conviction, I hope the votes will reach 16, so that issues on threshold will already be moot and academic,’ Luistro disclosed her wish.
‘That is just my personal opinion. It does not bind the prosecution team,’ she added.
Bicol Saro party-list Rep. Terry Ridon, another member of the prosecution team, said that they are not participating in the impeachment trial to count votes, but to present evidence against Duterte.
‘Again, we are not here to count votes. We are not vote counters here,’ he gave the reminder.
He repeated their team’s purpose: ‘We will lay down the evidence about the Articles of Impeachment against the vice president.’
Despite this, Ridon also disclosed that the prosecution’s desire is to get the ‘biggest number of votes’ possible.
‘Whatever the number of votes we reach, if this is sufficient to convict, then we will abide by what the votes will be. But, of course, we really want the biggest number of votes at that point,’ he also confessed.
‘So whether it’s 16 or lower, it is up for the senator-judges to make that determination. For us, we will deliver the evidence in each and every article,’ he added.
Article XI, Section 3(5) of the 1987 Constitution states that an impeached official will only be convicted upon the ‘concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.’
Two-thirds of the 24 members of the Senate is 16, but the absence of several senator-judges have raised questions from different sides.
Some individuals supportive of the vice president have insisted that all members of the Senate refer to all senators, even if they are beyond the coercive powers of the chamber, since their titles as senators have not been removed from them.
However, there are also those who have asked how judges can make a sound decision if they have not observed the proceedings and failed to study documents and witnesses’ testimonies.
This was the same point raised by public prosecutor and Akbayan party-list Rep. Chel Diokno during the oral arguments on Wednesday.
As of Thursday, four senators have missed a huge chunk of the trial: Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Rodante Marcoleta, and Ronald dela Rosa have not attended a single trial day, while Senator Loren Legarda left the country early August.
Estrada and Marcoleta have been detained on separate plunder raps, while dela Rosa has evaded public eye amid an arrest order from the International Criminal Court. /apl
After the oral arguments, 13 senator-judges present voted in favor of allow a lower minimum number of votes to convict Duterte.
The denominator that will be used to determine a two-thirds vote will depend on how many members of the Senate will be available.
The ruling read by Presiding Officer and Senator-judge Francis Escudero stated that the following members will be excluded from the voting process:
Detained and/or suspended, or otherwise legally restrained from exercising the functions of a senator
Persons sought by authorities whose whereabouts are unknown
Suffering from a physical or medical incapacity
Beyond the coercive processes of the Senate
Others similarly situated
Escudero also laid down specific conditions on who will not be allowed to vote once they decide on the case.
He clarified further that while the threshold is still two-thirds of all members present, they will have to round up in case the computation results into a decimal point.
As an example, Escudero said that in case only 20 senator-judges remain, two-thirds will be 13.33.
They will round up the number, even if the decimal point is less than 0.5, which means that instead of merely 13 votes to convict Duterte, the requirement will be 14.
Earlier, Luistro also clarified that the court’s ruling did not change the conviction threshold itself, as the Constitution’s two-thirds requirement for conviction still stands.
Another clarification that Luistro made is that based on their understanding, the availability of senator-judges will be determined at the time of voting.
As an example, Luistro believes that Legarda can participate and vote if ever she will return to work before the court delivers its verdict on the impeachment case against Duterte.