How do the stakeholders navigate the turbulent political waters in the “battle of the narratives” when two warring ships in the high seas communicate calls or signals that could mean “mayday” (distress), “pan-pan” (urgency), or “securite” (safety)? As a maxim goes, “as long as there are seas, there are bandits.” By greed or aggression, who is being taken advantage of in the confusing scheme of “prey-and-predator”?

The trial that must follow the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte is itself ghostly, likened to a ship lost at sea after it left port. Disconcerting questions on many legal minds place in doubt whether that “big ship” is gone, in a shipwreck, sunk, found adrift with no crew, or is otherwise foundering. In a game of chess, is it a “stalemate?”

On the level of philosophical abstraction, the VP’s trial challenges various advocates — equivocating that if not done it destroys the constitutional order, the bedrock of democracy, the system of checks and balances in the affairs of state. The battle cry for “public trust and accountability” forms the shared common ground on both sides of the aisle.

The major arguments raised, among others, revolve around prevailing dilemmas or paradoxes, viz: 1) whether the Senate is an ordinary legislative body or a constitutional office of accountability; 2) the Senate, as an impeachment court, shall have “forthwith proceeded” with the trial once the articles of impeachment were transmitted by the Lower Chamber; 3) the contentious if conflicting notions on impeachment, as one that is on a higher plane than “ordinary legislative or non-legislative business” citing “inapplicability” in referenced Supreme Court cases.

Other arguments were raised on “continuance or discontinuance” in the face of Rule 44 of the Senate Rules, the Constitution, and political history. The legal minds in the country’s premier law college didn’t fail to erect intellectual lampposts amid this grand debate in articulation of the “special character” of the Upper Chamber.

Beyond all this intellectual orgy where various quarters joined the national conversation, an even larger viewing audience is all eyes and ears for what will come to pass. What do all these conflicted interpretations of law actually mean to them, confronted as they are by the day-to-day realities of poverty, hunger and unemployment?

Incidentally, there ought to be solid ground to debunk a constitutional framer’s worldview, ambiguity if you will, when he argued that the “other half of the Senate whose terms don’t expire until 2028 could assume as senator-judges if a trial was ongoing.”

This implies a different “time capsule” and “power bank” for the 11 continuing incumbents, as if this less-than-half can act alone, even reign supreme, over the new pack of 12 senators elected/reelected in the midterms.

Otherwise, can it not be philosophically raised whether a fresh new mandate accruing to the augmented 12 should take precedence over the mandate of the 11 incumbents who, by a historical given, “bypassed” the 2025 electoral exercise? Or, why do senators have different ends of term which could be the proper subject of a constitutional amendment?

When the confusion as to whether the old 19th Congress (represented by the continuing incumbents) can pursue its unfinished business in the new 20th Congress (represented by those elected/re-elected in the 2025 midterms) is deemed unsettled, it stands to reason to restudy the time and power boundaries between them arising from the crossover.

Verily, the old pack should have first resolved whether the impeachment trial must cross the line; and when resolved, only then can the Senate as a whole contingent of 23 senators — mixed and immutable — “reset” the legislative agenda within an official time and power continuum.

The larger public knows all too well that Sara is next in the administration’s “order of battle” after the “illegal” transfer of her father-former-president to The Hague. Ironically, the direct and heavy control the legislature has over FM Jr. requires a difficult and treacherous balancing act.