On September 23, the Senate impeachment court voted 13-1 to scrap the fixed 16-vote threshold for conviction. It ruled that the two-thirds requirement will count only senators able to take part in the trial. Thus far, four senators cannot. Sen. Bato dela Rosa is hiding from an International Criminal Court warrant. Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta are detained on plunder charges, and Sen. Loren Legarda is abroad on medical leave. That leaves 20 senators. To convict, the prosecution now needs 14 votes instead of 16.
Speculation on social media about an impending defense boycott may have been triggered in part by the minority senators’ decision to stay out of the chamber during the vote. Also, Marcoleta, from detention, expressed he would boycott the trial himself. In fairness to the defense panel, Vice President Sara Duterte’s lead counsel, Sheila Sison, said in a manifestation after the vote that the defense would continue to participate “ad cautelam”, or with caution, while reserving its right to challenge the ruling.
The defense’s objection may have a valid rationale. The Constitution speaks of two-thirds of “all the Members of the Senate,” and even the presiding officer, Sen. Francis Escudero, voted to keep his original 16-vote ruling. But the proper remedy for a disputed reading of the Constitution is the Supreme Court, where a petition has already been filed, and not via a walkout.
So what would staying in the trial cost Duterte? One has only to look at what the trial has put on the record to see that the Vice President is in deep trouble.
The Philippine Statistics Authority found no birth records for 1,322 supposed payees of the OVP’s P500-million confidential funds and 405 recipients of DepEd’s P112.5 million. Some names on the acknowledgement receipts matched people long dead. One was a child who died at two months old in 1965. The defense’s answer is that the names were aliases. But an alias does not need a death certificate, and a real informant does not borrow the identity of a dead infant.
Two Army colonels testified that their units did not receive a single peso of DepEd’s confidential funds for the youth leadership summits. Yet DepEd, under Duterte, had used their certifications to justify P15.54 million in confidential expenses before the Commission on Audit. The defense chose not to cross-examine them.
The harder parts of the trial are still ahead. The court gave the defense 15 days to answer 104 requests for admission on the unexplained-wealth article. The prosecution has said it wants to call the Vice President herself to the witness stand. A boycott would spare Sara Duterte those questions.
There is another reason the threshold matters so much to her camp. Under a fixed 16-vote rule, every absent senator worked in effect as a vote to acquit. With the threshold lowered, the defense lost an easy path to acquittal.
A walkout would also complete a story the Vice President has been repeating lately. She has accused President Marcos of controlling senators, prosecutors, judges and the police. If her lawyers leave, any conviction can be presented to her supporters as the product of a rigged count rather than of evidence.
But a walkout will not stop the trial. The Senate will proceed, guided by its own rules. A boycott would merely forfeit the defense’s chance to cross-examine witnesses and contest the record.
That is Sara’s dilemma. If she stays, she must answer the evidence. If she leaves, she lets it stand unanswered.
Some of the questions raised in this trial are simply damning. Who were the people who received public money under names like Mary Grace Piattos, and where did the money go? These questions deserve an answer under oath. If the Vice President walks away from them, the public is entitled to draw its own conclusion.
