Why Sara Duterte ally is taking impeachment vote threshold fight to SC

VEEP. Vice President Sara Duterte arrives at the Quezon City RTC on September 11, 2026, to attend arraignment proceedings for a grave threats case.

Jire Carreon/Rappler

'The Senate possesses the power to try and decide. It does not possess the power to determine its own constitutional voting threshold,' says lawyer and former executive secretary Vic Rodriguez

AT A GLANCE

• Vic Rodriguez, former executive secretary and ally of Vice President Sara Duterte, is challenging the Senate impeachment court's ruling that lowered the threshold for impeachment convictions before the Supreme Court.
• Rodriguez filed a certiorari petition arguing that the Senate's ruling alters the constitutional requirement for conviction, which mandates a two-thirds majority of all Senate members, and claims that the Senate cannot change this threshold through procedural rules.

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Vic Rodriguez, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s former executive secretary and now Vice President Sara Duterte’s ally, is challenging the lowered impeachment conviction threshold before the Supreme Court (SC).

On Thursday night, September 24, the High Court confirmed that Rodriguez filed a certiorari petition against the Senate impeachment court’s ruling. A certiorari petition is filed to review another body’s decision or grave abuse of discretion.

Rodriguez also asked for the issuance of a temporary restraining order, which if granted, can stop an application or implementation of an order.

A challenge for Rodriguez, however, is to prove that he has locus standi or the legal standing to file the petition, even if he is not directly a party to the case. This is a requirement to prove that a petitioner has a stake in the issue being sought for review. Petitions could be dismissed by the court due to the lack of a petitioner’s legal standing.

Rodriguez, however, said in his pleading: “Petitioner is a taxpayer with a direct interest in preventing the expenditure of public funds pursuant to an allegedly unconstitutional governmental act.”

With 13 affirmative votes, the Senate impeachment court voted to lower the voting threshold on Wednesday, September 23. Presiding officer Chiz Escudero, who ruled on July 6 that the votes needed to convict Duterte is fixed at 16, was the lone negative vote.

Based on the ruling, the court will count only the vote of senator-judges who are “legally and factually capable” of participating in the proceedings at the time of the vote. With 20 active senators at present, two-thirds (or the required number of conviction votes) would mean 14.

Assuming Rodriguez’s petition will not be dismissed outright, how is he trying to convince the SC that the Senate impeachment court was wrong about its ruling?

Constitutional violation?

In the petition, Rodriguez said the ruling did not only change a procedure in impeachment, but also the constitutional threshold for conviction itself. He argued that the ruling added a qualification to the phrase “all the Members of the Senate” found under Article XI, Section 3(6) of the 1987 Constitution.

“No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate,” the provision says.

Rodriguez argued that there are ways to change what’s written in the Constitution, such as through constitutional convention or people’s initiative. But nothing in the Constitution, according to the former Malacañang official, says that the impeachment court can modify a provision through a ruling, or alter the conviction denominator.

Under Article XI, Section 3(8), Congress — the House of Representatives and the Senate — has the power to make its own impeachment rules. The House has the mandate to endorse a complaint and impeach an official, while the Senate serves as the impeachment court.

But Rodriguez argued that a procedural rule cannot change what’s written in the Constitution, adding that an implementing rule must follow the principles declared in the highest law of the land.

“The Tribunal’s interpretation effectively substitutes one phrase for another. The Constitution says: ‘all the Members of the Senate.’ The Tribunal’s rule operates as though the Constitution said: ‘all Members of the Senate who are legally and factually capable of participating in the impeachment proceedings,'” the lawyer argued.

“Those are not equivalent phrases. The latter contains substantive qualifications that the former
does not,” he added.

Membership, participation are different

The petition also argued that the Senate, under the Constitution, is composed of 24 senators. Rodriguez said Senate membership is a legal status, while participation is an act related to the exercise of the membership.

He claimed that the absence of a senator does not make him or her a non-member of the upper chamber.

“If the constitutional denominator were allowed to fluctuate with attendance, incapacity, recusal, or other circumstances, the threshold for conviction would cease to be fixed by the Constitution. It would instead depend upon factual determinations made by the Tribunal. Such a mechanism is not found in Article XI, Section 3(6),” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez also argued that the Senate’s power to try and decide impeachment cases is subject to constitutional limitations. He claimed that, yes, the upper chamber has the said mandate, but this provision should be interpreted along with the phrase “no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”

“The Senate possesses the power to try and decide. It does not possess the power to determine its own
constitutional voting threshold. The latter is fixed by the Constitution,” the former Marcos official said.

“Because the Tribunal’s ruling effectively modifies an express constitutional provision without constitutional authority to do so, it should be annulled for grave abuse of discretion,” he added.

The Vice President’s camp said they will seek an SC intervention themselves, but did not provide specific details as to when they will do so.

“[We] Will issue a statement once we’ve filed. However, there won’t be a need to cover because petitions filed before the Supreme Court are done electronically — they are not physically filed,” defense spokesperson Michael Poa said on Wednesday.

For the House prosecution team, it is too early to file a petition before the SC because the issue is not yet justiciable or a legal issue that needs to be decided by a court. The Senate has yet to vote whether to acquit or convict Duterte as the trial is ongoing.

“Magiging justiciable and ripe lang ito for purposes of filing a petition [with] the Supreme Court after voting on the verdict, which means the conviction or acquittal,” lead prosecutor Gerville Luistro said. (The case will only be justiciable and ripe for filing a petition with the Supreme Court after the voting on the verdict, which means the conviction or acquittal.) – Rappler.com