Redemption, forthwith
Politics, as the saying goes, is the art of the possible. In the Senate, it seems more like the art of making the improbable appear inevitable.
So it is with the plan of the chamber’s newly legitimized majority to tap Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero to preside over the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
The rationale seemed sound enough: “He’s a lawyer and has experience with the impeachment process,” Sen. Panfilo Lacson said.
But only the naive would believe that to be the sole reason. After all, the context of Escudero’s comeback–still “under discussion” as Lacson and Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian have taken pains to emphasize–is a Senate upheaval whose victors hold a precarious majority, with Escudero representing the crucial 12th vote in a now 13-person bloc.
Such accommodations are hardly unusual in the halls of Congress, but what matters more is what Escudero does with the opportunity. Politics may explain how he came to be the presumptive choice, but it cannot excuse how he performs once the gavel is in his hands.
A second chance
Civil society groups under the Tindig Pilipinas coalition warned that Escudero’s appointment, should it come to pass, would only damage the Senate’s already battered credibility. It’s a concern that cannot be dismissed lightly.
His stewardship of the first Duterte impeachment last year left an indelible and, some would say, disgraceful mark on the public consciousness. The 1987 Constitution directs that once the House transmits articles of impeachment through the vote of at least one-third of its members, trial by the Senate shall “forthwith proceed.” Yet under Escudero’s helm, “forthwith” stretched across months of delay, an interpretation that inexplicably found favor with the Supreme Court in a July 2025 ruling.
That chapter is finished, and even President Marcos sees the forthwith saga as water under the bridge. Fortunately for Escudero, history occasionally grants political leaders a second chance to right wrongs.
Indeed, the focus must now move from members’ past indiscretions to the impeachment court’s actions from this point forward. The Senate’s conduct over the past month offered too many reminders of how easily shifting alliances and personal loyalties influence its behavior.
Once the trial begins, however, senators must leave their party hats at the door, for they owe allegiance neither to the administration nor to the opposition, but to the Constitution.
By design, the impeachment trial is a political proceeding, but the senators must remember that “political” is not synonymous with “partisan.” In the impeachment court, partisanship must not prevail over truth and evidence.
Threshold for conviction
One critical question the court must resolve early is the threshold for conviction.
Gatchalian has opined that 16 votes are needed to convict, while Lacson has floated the bizarre idea of allowing detained senators to serve as judges. The most sensible approach came from the House prosecution panel: determine the mandated two-thirds vote based on senators who are fully capable of performing the court’s functions.
The Constitution requires the concurrence of two-thirds of “all the members of the Senate” to convict. But treating the Senate’s full complement of 24 seats as the default baseline seems utterly divorced from reality. If senators are outside the bounds of the chamber’s coercive power, insisting on counting them for purposes of conviction would produce absurd results.
Imagine an impeachment court where only 15 are able to serve. Must every impeached official automatically escape conviction because securing 16 votes is now mathematically impossible?
That surely could not have been the framers’ intent.
Volatility of Senate numbers
This scenario is no longer hypothetical: Multiple senators are facing the prospect of arrest due to their involvement in the flood control scandal, including the 13th addition to the new majority, Sen. Joel Villanueva, and Escudero himself. In the minority bloc, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada is detained and suspended from office; Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa is running from an International Criminal Court arrest warrant; Sen. Bong Go may soon be the subject of a similar warrant, and Sen. Rodante Marcoleta is battling a plunder case.
Serving as senator-judges does not place them beyond the reach of the law. On the contrary, their cases must proceed if the evidence demands it. But their situations show precisely the volatility of the Senate’s numbers and the impracticality of setting 16 votes as an immutable threshold.
If the impeachment court clings to that number, it may well have guaranteed impunity for Duterte or any impeachable official, betraying the whole purpose of impeachment as a vital check on power.
Whether the gavel is handed to Escudero or someone else, the task at hand is clear: Let the evidence speak, let accountability run its course–for the Vice President and senators alike–and this time around, let “forthwith” mean “at once.”
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