Clash on Senate online voting ends in walkout
Senators from the minority bloc walked out of the plenary session on Tuesday night, dramatizing their strong objection to a move calling on the chamber body to decide on a two-week-old proposal from Sen. Rodante Marcoleta to let members vote in sessions via online channels.
Senate Minority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto III stayed just to question the presence of a quorum. Having established that there was none, Senate President Pro-Tempore Loren Legarda, who was presiding, had no choice but to adjourn.
Minutes after the walkout, Sen. Francis Pangilinan posted on social media that the minority senators “strongly condemn what appears to be an attempt to rush a major change in the Senate rules.”
He was referring to the move to put the Marcoleta proposal to a vote on the floor just 15 days after it was introduced.
“We walked out because what happened on the floor looked less like orderly deliberation,” Pangilinan said, adding: “The proposed rule change affects how senators may attend sessions, participate in proceedings and exercise their mandate through remote means, and such a measure should be opened to healthy public debate instead of being rushed by the tyranny of the majority.”
Marcoleta formalized the proposal that he initially raised on May 11, the day Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa surfaced after being absent for six months. Dela Rosa went back into hiding two days after he was placed on “protective custody” by newly elected Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano in view of an unsealed warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.
The proposal was referred to the Senate committee on rules and, on Tuesday, presented back to the plenary. An intense debate ensued.
What triggered the debate was an inquiry from former Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who pointed out that the committee on rules had not convened prior to the proposal being taken to the plenary.
Proposed measures in the Senate must first be heard in the committee to which it was referred. Following a hearing, the assigned committee will then file a report that requires the signatures of a majority of its members before it is presented to the plenary.
“Has the committee on rules been constituted?” Lacson asked, referring to the fact that committees were all declared vacant prior to the election Cayetano. While some committee chairmanships and memberships had been elected in plenary in the last two weeks, the committee on rules has not been among those.
In response, Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano said the motion made was in accordance instead to Rule 51 of the chamber, which reads: “The Rules may also be amended by means of a motion… and the vote of the majority of the Senators present in the session shall be required for its approval.”
Disregarded committees
Lacson replied: “Does this mean we are now disregarding the committees of the Senate?”
The senator pointed out that Cayetano himself suggested that Marcoleta’s proposal should be assessed in the Senate rules panel.
“The committee on rules don’t have members because we vacated,” Lacson stressed, questioning again how Marcoleta’s measure could be taken up in plenary.
However, Cayetano insisted that the proposal is simple and may already be discussed in plenary.
Upon Lacson’s further objection, Cayetano moved to vote on whether or not the proposal must be taken up in the plenary.
Senators Sotto and Pangilinan and Risa Hontiveros blocked the motion for a vote, and backed Lacson.
“I suggest that we constitute the Committee on Rules and discuss it there,” Sotto said, emphasizing that as a minority leader, he would’ve known whether or not the panel had already convened.
“I am not a member of the Rules [committee]? I’m an ex-officio. Was there a call? None. What is this? Arm-twisting?” Sotto asked.
Alan insists on vote
Instead of heeding Sotto, Cayetano pursued once more a motion to vote on the matter. “I move that we divide the house,” he reiterated.
Pangilinan then came up to the microphone, asking why the debates on the motion were being sped up.
“We are several members of the minority here and only Senator Lacson has spoken. Why are we railroading this process? I have a number of issues that I’d like to raise regarding this motion,” Pangilinan said.
He then explained that the motion to take up the proposal in plenary is a new motion separate from the one that was already referred to the committee on rules, and therefore must be presented in the next session instead.
Lacson further criticized the move of the majority senators, saying “We cannot just ram down our throats something that numbers can dictate.”
Cayetano then questioned the language of the minority senators, before suggesting once again a vote on how to proceed.
This was opposed by some minority senators, who then walked out of the session hall. Most of the people in the gallery followed them.
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