By any reasonable yardstick, Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial will be the sole distraction in our politics in the coming weeks.

In fact, that foreseeable public preoccupation with the trial partly explains why Senate President Chiz Escudero postponed the start of the trial.

It also partly explains why the Marcos administration is adamantly against the impeachment trial while Ms. Duterte positively welcomes it.

Without saying so publicly, the Marcos administration is subtly admitting that the trial is an expensive distraction, threatening to derail whatever it is desperately trying to do to resolve its governance issues.

For her part, also without saying so publicly, Ms. Duterte is perhaps more than likely cheering on the administration to dig itself deeper into a hole.

Here, it must be noted that wily Ms. Duterte hasn’t withdrawn a pending petition asking the Supreme Court to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the Senate from acting on the House’s impeachment complaints.

As to whom between the two protagonists was dealt the better hand — we’ll know soon enough.

These real reactions generally show that the constitutionally mandated impeachment trial can’t be “killed.” And the Senate of the 19th Congress will proceed with convening the impeachment tribunal starting 11 June.

In case the tribunal is finally up and running, only the 24 senators of the 19th Congress will be sworn in as senator-judges.

No newly elected senator — except those who were reelected — will be sworn in as an impeachment judge. The newly elected senators can only sit as senator-judges on 28 July when the 20th Congress is convened.

The Senate of the 19th Congress, therefore, has 19 days to conduct an explosive trial, while perhaps trying to settle among themselves the raging question of whether or not the incoming Senate can continue the impeachment trial.

Of the debate on whether or not Ms. Duterte can be impeached and convicted by different Congresses, there are currently two views.

One view, says the UP Law Center, is “the Senate can continue with the trial beyond 30 June because it is a ‘continuing body’ pursuant to older decisions of the Supreme Court; the power of impeachment is not legislative and therefore does not expire with each Congress; and accountability as the underlying spirit of the Constitution requires a final decision by the Senate.”

The other view is based on the fact that the Supreme Court has more recently held that the present Senate is not a continuing body.

Hence, “due to the termination of the business of the Senate during the expiration of one Congress, all pending matters and proceedings, such as unpassed bills and legislative investigations, of the Senate are considered terminated upon the expiration of that Congress, and it is merely optional on the Senate of the succeeding Congress to take up such unfinished matters, not of the same status, but as if presented for the first time.”

Incoming Senator Panfilo Lacson, however, offered somewhat of a compromise last week.

While he agreed the Senate sitting as an impeachment court is no longer a legislative body, Lacson believes the Senate court has the final say on whether or not the trial can continue into the next Congress.

“It’s the Senate (as an impeachment court) that will decide if the trial carries over. That decision alone will likely only require a simple majority vote, not the two-thirds needed for conviction,” Lacson argued.

Lacson also said that should the impeachment court go in that direction, the Senate’s decision can’t be reviewed or overruled by the Supreme Court.

But whatever scenario, the Senate is nonetheless left with no other option than to carefully weigh the public’s reaction towards whatever explosive evidence, like bank accounts, the House prosecutors will bring before the court.