The House prosecution panel accused the Senate on Wednesday of brazenly violating the Constitution by remanding the articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives after more than four months of “stalling” it.

Prosecutor Lorenz Defensor called this a “flagrant trample” on the Constitution because remanding was never an option for the Senate as an impeachment court. He asserted that there’s nothing in the Constitution that provides the Senate with any power beyond trying and deciding the case of an impeached official. 

“The Senate made a dangerous precedent. It was a clear breach of their duty, and a breach of public trust,” Defensor said in an interview. “It’s an illegal compromise by the members of the Senate to remand the impeachment complaint because the impeachment has no option to remand. It’s either convict or acquit after trial. This is a flagrant trampling on the Constitution, on our democracy.”

Eighteen of the 23 senator-judges agreed to return the impeachment complaint to the House, just shortly after it had convened as an impeachment court. 

The House had waited over four months for the Senate to constitute itself as impeachment tribunal and commence the trial since the transmission of the verified petition on 5 February. However, at the last minute, the Senate employed what critics called another delaying tactic. 

Senate President Chiz Escudero has been accused of deliberately stalling the impeachment by refusing to convene the Senate as a court. He moved to defer the presentation of the articles of impeachment from 2 to 11 June, citing pending priority legislation of the administration, which he claimed required greater attention.

The supposed presentation falls on Wednesday, the last session day of Congress before it adjourns sine die.

However, majority of the senators agreed with the motion made by Senator Bong Go, a staunch Duterte ally, that there is a need to remand the case to the House, citing “legal questions that remain unanswered.”

This move, according to prosecutors Romeo Acop and Keith Flores, was a clear intent to kill the impeachment case. 

‘Obliged but we‘ll defer’

The panel of prosecutors said that while they are obliged to comply with the Senate impeachment court’s order, they will defer the receipt of the remanded articles of impeachment pending clarification from the upper chamber.

This includes the certification to the House that the complaint did not breach the Constitution, including the one-year prohibition rule.

Prosecutor Gerville Luistro said that while they are bound by the Senate, she argued that it’s “not their job to accept a remanded impeachment complaint.” 

“We do not defy; we do not disobey,” Luistro told reporters in a briefing, emphasizing that they “fully and strictly” complied with the rules and procedures concerning the impeachment.

Luistro cited the ruling of former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, presiding officer during the impeachment trial of the late Supreme Court justice Renato Corona, that when a verified petition alredy secured the signature of requires one third member of the entire House, it “already enjoys presumption of legality and cannnot be quetioned anymore.”

“Chiz has been saying they cannot bind the 20th Congress yet, in their orders, they are making us comment for the 20th Congress. It’s very impossible to comply with such an order. How can we move forward if it’s a condition of moving forward?” Flores chimed in.

For Defensor, the supposed deficiencies in the impeachment complaint do not give the Senate special powers to remand the same to the House. He pointed out that this could be addressed while the trial is ongoing.

The impeachment complaint transmitted by the Senate on 5 February was the fourth petition lodged against the VP in a span of only two months. It was endorsed by more than 200 members of the House.

Duterte’s legal team petitioned the Supreme Court on 18 February to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the Senate from acting on her impeachment case, alleging that the articles of impeachment were defective and rife with constitutional infirmities.

The VP alleged that the House of Representatives circumvented the one-year prohibition mandated by the Constitution when it filed the fourth impeachment complaint on 5 February, just two months after the first three separate complaints were lodged against her in December.

This is the same rationale behind reported attempts by her allies in the Senate to effectively dismiss the impeachment case.

Defensor, however, maintained that the House exercised utmost prudence in ensuring that the fourth impeachment complaint was transmitted in accordance with the Constitution.

He argued that, unlike the first three complaints, the fourth impeachment case was endorsed by 215 lawmakers, double the required one-third votes or equivalent to 102 signatures of the entire House. This allowed the impeachment to bypass committee hearings and be transmitted directly to the Senate for trial. The first three petitions were only endorsed by a maximum of four lawmakers. 

Prosecutor Joel Chua, for his part, reminded Dela Rosa that he could kill the impeachment complaint because dismissal was never an option for the Senate.

Despite fiery exchanges, the prosecution expressed confidence that the impeachment trial will proceed since the Senate has already acquired jurisdiction and a summons has already been served to Duterte. 

According to Acop, the trial shall proceed regardless of whether it stretches into the next Congress, saying a botched proceeding will send the “wrong signal to the Filipino people that our Constitution can just be violated by powerful people.”