With no precedents guiding its actions on Tuesday, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said the Senate of the 19th Congress is treading ‘uncharted territory’ by voting to remand the Articles of Impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte to the House of Representatives.
Gatchalian is among the only five senators—joining Aquilino ‘Koko’ Pimentel III, Risa Hontiveros, Nancy Binay, and Grace Poe—who voted against this development and preferred the Senate, convening as an impeachment court, to finally conduct an ‘open trial’ to debate on various issues.
“My vote has nothing to do with whether the articles of impeachment are constitutionally infirm, or constitutionally superior, or constitutionally sound. My vote just has to do with transparency,” the two-term senator said in his manifestation.
Gatchalian explained that by convening an open trial, it would have provided both the prosecution and the defense an opportunity to argue their cases in a transparent manner where “fairness and due process” have been observed.
“In this open trial, we as senator-judges ourselves, would also have the opportunity to question, scrutinize the documents. And if the argument of the prosecution is weak, we can outright dismiss (the proceedings),” he noted.
But with 18 of his fellow senators choosing to return the articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives, Gatchalian expressed concern over its possible outcome because “without any precedents” no one knows what’s going to happen.
“With this new intervention, in my opinion, because this is new, like an uncharted territory, we don’t know what the next steps are going to be,” Gatchalian told reporters. “It really depends on the next moves. Hopefully, there will be no delay,” he added.
The motion to remand the articles of impeachment back to Congress was proposed by Senator Alan Peter Cayetano to satisfy Senator Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa, a known Duterte ally, who raised the issue of the House possibly violating the one-year ban on impeachment complaints.
Cayetano described his motion as a “compromise,” which would allow the impeachment trial to cross over into the 20th Congress, where he will continue to sit as one of the senator-judges. From his perspective, this is a much better option since the next Congress has more time to work on the trial.
“My amendment is to return it to the House and let them certify that, number one—including the circumstances—that they did not violate the Constitution in entertaining more than one impeachment complaint in one year; number two, that they are interested in the impeachment complaint; and number three, is really for the judges of the 20th (Congress) on what they plan to do,” he explained.
This means, according to Cayetano, the impeachment complaint against the Vice President continues as he was also against its dismissal as proposed by Dela Rosa.
“I’m just saying there is wisdom now in not dismissing it and there is nothing lost if we return it to the House and let them fix what they will submit to us,” Cayetano told his fellow senators.