Lawyer petitions SC to void Senate impeachment court ruling on threshold

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Another lawyer has filed a petition before the Supreme Court (SC), asking it to void the Senate impeachment court’s recent ruling that excluded non-participant senator-judges in computing the threshold needed for Vice President Sara Duterte’s conviction.

This is the second petition challenging the voting threshold decided on September 23, 2026.

In a 112-page petition for certiorari and prohibition filed on Friday, Atty. Ernesto Francisco Jr. prayed for a Status Quo Ante Order (SQAO) to reverse the changes that took effect after the impeachment court’s ruling.

“It is most respectfully prayed that upon the filing of this Petition, a Status Quo Ante Order be issued directing the parties to maintain the last actual, peaceable and uncontested state of affairs that existed before the present controversy,” the petition’s prayer read.

“It is further prayed of the Honorable Court that the proceedings conducted on 23 September 2026 that led to the issuance of the Ruling be declared null and void,” it added.

Francisco asked for the SC’s intervention as the final arbiter on the issue, adding that the impeachment court's decision will “surely lead to further division of the Filipino people and likely political chaos and instability.”

He emphasized that an SQAO is an essential measure that must be issued immediately to avoid “grave and irreparable” injurious consequences to the case.

Former Executive Secretary Vic Rodriguez also previously asked the High Court to declare the impeachment court’s September 23 ruling null and void, arguing that the Constitution sets the voting threshold at two-thirds of all members of the Senate, which should be 16 if all 24 senators are counted.

On Wednesday, 13 senator-judges voted in favor of the motion to base the two-thirds conviction vote on the number of senators who are "legally and factually participating in the impeachment proceedings."

Senator Francis Escudero, the impeachment court presiding officer, said that under this rule, the members excluded from the vote count are those:

• detained and/or suspended or otherwise legally restrained from exercising the functions of a senator,
• persons sought by authorities and whose whereabouts are unknown,
• suffering from a physical or medical incapacity,
• beyond the coercive processes of the Senate, and
• others similarly situated.