Hot camotes
Since timing is everything, three people got us to where we are. The first was the Speaker of the House, who decided to impeach the Vice President just as Congress was preparing to go on recess for the midterm elections. The second was the President, who declined to call Congress into a special session during the election break for the purpose of holding the impeachment trial during the campaign period. The third was the Senate President, who planted himself firmly in the ground like a camote and decided to do the bare minimum with regard to impeachment.
A review of Paolo S. Tamase’s “Emerging Issues in Philippine Impeachment and the Accountability Constitution,” his summary of a forum on the topic last February, is helpful in outlining the three dilemmas confronting senators as the 19th Congress limps toward extinction this month while waiting for the 20th Congress to be born next month. The first two were resolved through inaction: whether the Senate, could on its own, conduct an impeachment trial while Congress was in recess, or, whether the President, by issuing a proclamation calling Congress into special session, could enable an impeachment trial to proceed—both became moot and academic.
A third dilemma, however, remains: as one Congress bows out and another convenes, can an impeachment trial proceed? The answer depends on whether the Senate can be considered a continuing body. If you ask the Americans after whom we patterned our Congress and its powers, the answer is a definite yes: impeachment started in an old Congress and continues in the new one. Filipinos who can’t leave well enough alone will try to argue things to death, including hedging by insisting the Senate might, and it can, but only if the senators in the new Congress decide to do so—the choice is theirs. Of course, there are others who will argue the charges will expire when the current House bows out by the end of the month.
To be fair, there wouldn’t even be a debate on whether the Senate is a continuing body if only the losers of pre-martial law hadn’t tried to improve their chances for senatorial election, by making the post-1987 Senate elect half its members every six years, instead of a third every three years, which is what the pre-1973 Senate (which was indubitably a continuing body because at any given time, fully two-thirds of its members were in office, constituting a majority to do business) used to do. Electing 12 at a time gave those who lost out by coming in ninth and below in the old days, a chance to make it (and also inadvertently created the demand for votes, which dagdag-bawas was meant to supply, because while the system changed, the behavior of voters remarkably remained the same. To this day, voters find it easy to decide on eight senators but tough to do so for more!).
But today’s situation began because of the Senate President being politically stingy. So economical in action was he, that when he defended his inaction, he did so by leaving out mention of the word “forthwith”—that constitutional command that made his making like a camote controversial in the first place.
With the election over, the public didn’t help matters by turning out to be a hung jury: its referendum on the sitting president resulted in a 5-5 tie between Marcos and Duterte, The two pink candidates tipped the balance against Marcos, but neither of the two could be considered an endorsement of Duterte. With no clear public signal, the Senate President boldly decided to double down on that sweet ole camote style.
“We cannot bind the hands of the next Congress,” he droned on in the kind of statement a Senate president makes when he doesn’t expect to be head of the chamber when it reconvenes. The leading candidate to replace him, the once and future Senate President Vicente Sotto III, is doing his part to prove that yes, the camote can—meaning he can be every bit a camote as his soon-to-be predecessor, by declaring that he thinks an impeachment passed in the 19th Congress ends where the 20th Congress begins.
The older generation that cringes whenever Francis Escudero presides over the Senate, wearing what appeared to be either a polo barong or one with the sleeves rolled up so high as to imitate one, might prefer to replace the man smirking at the rostrum with a comedian capable of being suave and polished during office hours. But that is to substitute the ridiculous with the absurd—as both seem to be more interested in proving which camote can be Senate President again than in fulfilling the obligation to render judgment on the charges already on the record because transmitted to and accepted by the Senate for trial.
