OPINION
A lower threshold for conviction
Mr. Marcos and his allies now know exactly how close they are to eliminating their most formidable political rival in 2028.
The Supreme Court’s (SC) dismissal of the petitions challenging the Senate impeachment court’s lower voting threshold for conviction in Vice President Sara Duterte’s trial was perceived by many as a legal victory for the Senate majority and the allies of the Marcos Jr. administration.
On 30 September, the High Court dismissed three petitions on procedural grounds — lack of standing and prematurity — challenging the Senate’s 23 September decision to lower the conviction threshold from a fixed 16 votes to the next highest whole number based on the number of senators “legally and factually capable of participating” at the time of judgment.
The petitioners in the three separate filings similarly argued that the Senate decision effectively amended the Constitution by adopting an interpretation of the phrase “all members of the Senate” with certain qualifications or conditions.
The Supreme Court’s dismissal of the challenges, while it changed nothing, will actually significantly impact the outcome of the impeachment trial. With it, the Senate is free to apply its decision that the two-thirds requirement will not be counted against the full 24-member Senate but from a reduced denominator that will exclude senators who are detained, in hiding, medically incapacitated, or otherwise unable to participate.
What the dismissal actually accomplished was to remove the last procedural obstacle between the Senate impeachment court and a final verdict. The threshold question — whether conviction requires 16 votes — has been settled in favor of allowing a lower bar to be applied, at least for the time being.
The prosecution now knows exactly how many votes it needs to convict. And Mr. Marcos and his allies now know exactly how close they are to eliminating their most formidable political rival in 2028.
The lowered threshold makes conviction mathematically more achievable. With four senators — all allies of the Vice President — unable to participate, the prosecution now needs only 14 votes instead of 16.
Assuming only 14 votes will be needed to convict, the prosecution has a better chance of securing a conviction, and with it the absolute disqualification of the Vice President from running for president in 2028.
To be clear, the Supreme Court did not engage the merits. The SC’s dismissal of the petitions did not decide the impeachment case but merely declined to interfere in it at this point. But what is certain is that it may still do so, but only when there is an actual and justiciable controversy brought before it by the proper party with legal standing.
Meaning that in the event of VP Duterte’s conviction on a lower vote threshold, she will have standing to question the judgment as a justiciable controversy and seek the intervention of the Supreme Court, especially since the accessory penalty of perpetual disqualification from public office will prevent her from filing her candidacy for any elective post in the 2028 elections.
The irony is that the Marcos administration has spent months insisting the impeachment is “driven by law, not 2028 politics.” Yet every development in the case points to a single, inescapable conclusion: the fate of the 2028 presidential election is being decided in the Senate, not at the ballot box.
The administration can deny it as much as it wants. The math and the timing tell a different story. And the Senate — where Marcos’ allies have the numbers while the opposition dwindles — is the instrument of that decision.