In the wake of the crisis in the Senate over voting rules comes the crucial concern over what will now happen to the Impeachment Court set to hear the Veep’s string of cases.
The impeachment court is undoubtedly in a pickle, particularly in light of reports that possibly nine senator-judges stand to be jailed locally or at The Hague.
And jailed senator-judges would definitely impact the court to such an extent of seriously derailing its constitutional mandate.
As one political observer, summing up the emerging consensus on the issue, said: “But now we are where we are, where the Senate is looking at the possibility of being incapable of either convicting, or acquitting, an impeached official, where it cannot muster enough warm bodies to have a quorum, where it cannot change its leadership, all because too many of its members are facing serious charges.”
Of course, as I write this the day before the Senate’s crucial session on Monday, 1 June, there’s no telling when the senators will resolve their Game of Thrones-like row over online attendance and voting rules — which, once resolved, will tell us where the impeachment court is headed.
But whatever happens, the question of how the impeachment court could properly conduct its official business in the face of the detention of several senators still hangs.
Several notable political observers and legal minds have proposed several options and scenarios, with most trying to answer two thorny questions:
a.) Can senator-judges facing criminal charges be suspended from or prevented from voting in the impeachment court?
b.) What are the rules addressing the above question? Are there also differing legal positions on those rules or is there an unassailable constitutional dictum?
Addressing thoroughly the two questions through constitutional provisions and other legal remedies and precedence is far too involved than this column allows.
What is clear is the issue will eventually go to the justices of the Supreme Court.
But as this goes on, Senator-judge Panfilo Lacson by his lonesome stated last week that senator-judges facing arrest may still participate in the trial of the Veep even without resorting to online attendance or voting. Senate rules and resolutions at the moment clearly don’t allow online attendance or voting.
How the senator-judges concerned can participate is to “obtain leave of court,” said Lacson, meaning the senator-judges will ask the court hearing their cases, likely the Sandiganbayan, to allow them to physically attend to their duties at the impeachment court.
Here it should be noted that Lacson’s premise for detained senator-judges to physically join the impeachment proceedings is on the presumption of innocence proffered to the arrested senators in the cases they face.
It largely means that “a senator under arrest is still a senator; only conviction, if it comes, can prevent or end their doing their duty,” said a political observer.
Lacson’s proposal, therefore, is about the arrested senators being securely brought to the Senate for the impeachment trial and brought back to jail after, until they cast their votes at the trial’s end.
However, there’s as yet no clue on how the courts view Lacson’s proposal.
Former Local Government Secretary Rafael Alunan III said last week, “The courts have routinely denied legislative furloughs to allow detained lawmakers to attend sessions, ruling that election to office does not place a person above the ordinary criminal justice process.”
So everything is still up in the air.
