Sara Duterte impeachment trial Day 29: Court overturns initial 16-conviction threshold in VP trial

The Senate impeachment court on Wednesday voted to base the two-thirds vote to convict the impeached Vice President Sara Duterte on the number of senators who are capable of "legally and factually participating in the impeachment proceedings."

Thirteen senator-judges voted in favor of the motion put forward by Senator-judge Erwin Tulfo, who sought reconsideration of the July 6 ruling after some senators became unavailable to participate in the impeachment trial.

On July 6, presiding officer Senator-judge Francis "Chiz" Escudero set the number of votes needed to convict at 16, or two-thirds of all the 24 senators.

Article 11, Section 6 of the Constitution does not state a number and instead reads, "No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”

The same constitutional provision also states that "The Senate shall have the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment."

Those who voted in favor of Tulfo’s motion are:

• Paolo Benigno "Bam" Aquino IV
• JV Ejercito
• Sherwin Gatchalian
• Risa Hontiveros
• Panfilo Lacson
• Lito Lapid
• Francis Pangilinan
• Vicente "Tito" Sotto III
• Erwin Tulfo
• Raffy Tulfo
• Joel Villanueva
• Mark Villar
• Juan Miguel Zubiri

Of the 13, only Senator Villar is from the Minority bloc.

The lone no vote came from Escudero.

The six minority bloc senators who did not participate in the vote are:

• Alan Peter Cayetano
• Pia Cayetano
• Christopher Go
• Imee Marcos
• Robin Padilla
• Camille Villar

Defense team lead counsel Sheila Sison said the Vice President’s camp will exhaust all legal remedies to address the new threshold for conviction, among other things.

"She reserves every right to exhaust all legal remedies available sa ilalim ng ating batas at Konstitusyon na may pagtatangi sa esensya ng isang tunay na malayang, demokratikong institusyon. At karapatan ng bawat mamamayan na madinig sa isang hukuman na walang kinikilingan o kinakatakutan," she added.

(She reserves every right to exhaust all legal remedies available under our law and Constitution, with due regard for the essence of a truly free, democratic institution. And it is the right of every citizen to be heard in an impartial court that fears no one.)

Alan Cayetano attempted to defer the voting, to no avail.

No acquittal by default

Ahead of the vote, House prosecutor Chel Diokno of Akbayan party-list said the threshold must be changed since the Vice President’s case should be decided on merits, not by default or absence of senator-judges.

“Yes, the Constitution deliberately makes conviction harder by imposing the two-thirds requirement. But making it harder is not the same as making it depend on senators who are not judges or who are incapable of acting as judges. That would be tantamount to an acquittal by default, a failure to arrive at the threshold number caused not by the judgment of the incapacitated senators, but by their mere inclusion in the denominator,” Diokno added.

Defense counsel Michael Poa, however, said that the July 6 ruling of Escudero setting 16 votes as the threshold cannot be appealed since it is not provided under Senate impeachment rules.

“Last July 6, 2026, on the very first day of trial, the presiding officer ruled that a voting threshold to convict is 16. At that time, no senator-judge objected. No senator-judge sought reconsideration. No senator-judge appealed. Your Honors, that was over two months ago. There is no supervening event. Our point is, nothing changed between July 6 and today,” Poa said.

Escudero, however, had a rebuttal for Poa by citing the Supreme Court decision in People v. Amigo, GR number 116719, which states that Supreme Court decisions are “not petrified rules grown rigid once pronounced, but may be reconsidered upon further reflection in light of new perspectives.”

“The July ruling issued during an ongoing proceeding is not a final judgment on any Article of Impeachment. It cannot claim greater; therefore, this issue cannot claim greater immutability than the judicial doctrine itself. Where the governing impeachment rules prescribe no period and no final judgment has been rendered, the court remains free to reconsider its interpretation,” Escudero said.

Erwin Tulfo also addressed Poa’s comments that there is no supervening event, citing that their four colleagues being detained due to alleged plunder, being in hiding from authorities and being on leave are something that the court should address as elected representatives of the people.

Camille Villar then appealed to his colleagues not to attack their detained fellow senators, saying that they are not yet convicted of their alleged crimes.

Her take was seconded by his brother, Mark Villar, citing that there should be respect among colleagues.

Erwin Tulfo apologized if his comments offended his colleagues, but he stressed that he never said their colleagues were convicted of crimes.

“What I said was they were charged in court,” Tulfo said.

“Further, the statements were not attacks against our fellow senators but merely confronting the present reality that some senators are physically or legally unable to participate in the impeachment trial. The issue of detained senators is so intertwined in the determination of the denominator,” Tulfo added. —LDF, GMA News