AN EXTREMELY confident House prosecution panel isn’t keen on the idea of raising the issue of the vote threshold to the Supreme Court to convict Vice President Sara Duterte.
However, the prosecutors won’t mind if other groups would go to the high tribunal to file a petition that would effectively lower the threshold required to oust and bar Duterte from holding any position in the government.
The 1987 Constitution states that a person being tried by the impeachment court cannot be convicted “without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate,” which means that 16 out of 24 votes are needed.
However, there have been proposals to lower the threshold amid the possibility that three senators — Ronald Dela Rosa, Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta — won’t be able to participate in view of legal predicaments.
“Well at this time, our position on this has been consistent from the very start. We don’t engage in vote counting, at the end of the day, our priority here is to establish an airtight case, we will ensure that with our case, this will be backed by solid evidence,” private prosecutor Jay Tolosa was quoted by the Inquirer in its report.
Tolosa maintained that the evidence against Duterte is more than enough to sway senator-judges to vote according to conscience.
“Regardless of what will be the final interpretation of the two-thirds threshold, we will get these numbers. So that is the priority of the prosecution from the start, and it remains to be our priority until now,” he added.
Prosecution adviser, former Surigao Rep. Robert Ace Barbers for his part hinted at several “schools of thought” in view of the situation of several senator-judges who may no longer be able to attend the trial.
He however made it clear that they prosecution is not entertaining such an idea.
Again, I’d like to emphasize that we’re not involved in political arithmetic or whatever calculations are involved. What the prosecution team is focused on is one, lay down the evidence; present the evidence in a manner relatable and understandable by the people; and third, show the importance of this accountability mechanism we are speaking of.”
Meanwhile, San Juan Rep. Ysabel Ma. Zamora said that the prosecution doesn’t have the luxury of time to file, much less attend SC hearings on such a petition.
“Well we said that of course, the presiding officer said that 16 is the threshold, so us as officers of the court, lawyers in an impeachment court, we will follow the 16,” she assured.
“Now if there are other people who will file petitions questioning the threshold, then we will just watch what will happen in that case before the Supreme Court,” Zamora added. “Yes, we will not file a case before the Supreme Court, we are very busy now with presenting our evidence.”
Tolosa previously said that the prosecution team’s goal is to build a case with overwhelming evidence that can convict Duterte regardless of how the threshold is interpreted.
