Ping: Senate trial of VP still 鈥榖est way forward鈥�
Panfilo ‘Ping’ Lacson during a forum at the Inquirer office in Makati. INQUIRER file photo
The Senate should convene itself into an impeachment court, let the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte cross over to the next Congress and determine whether she is guilty as the chamber has no “legal authority” to jettison the case against her without holding a trial, Senator-elect Panfilo “Ping” Lacson said on Friday.
Lacson, who just won his fourth six-year term as senator in the 20th Congress, rejected Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa’s draft resolution urging his colleagues to junk the impeachment case since they would be unable to tackle it after Senate President Francis Escudero moved the start of the impeachment proceedings to June 11, the senators’ last session day.
“There is no sense in the draft resolution calling for the de facto dismissal of the impeachment case against Vice President Duterte,” he said.
According to Lacson, the Senate must first sit as an impeachment court before it could act on matters related to the complaint against any impeachable government official.
“If (senators) are not acting as an impeachment court, they have no personality to dismiss the impeachment case,” he said in a statement. “The only entity that can act on an impeachment case properly transmitted by the House is the impeachment court itself.”
Lacson, who was one of the 20 senators who convicted impeached Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012, pointed out that until the senators are convened as an impeachment court, the 24-member Senate would still be a legislative body.
While carrying out its legislative functions, the Senate “has no jurisdiction or legal authority” to decide on issues pertaining to Duterte’s impeachment, he said.
“I don’t think they are authorized to act on an impeachment case transmitted by the House,” Lacson argued. “Only the Senate as an impeachment court can render a decision on the matter.”
“Going further,” he said, “the best way forward is to go into trial, to determine if there is a conviction or acquittal.”
Citing the arguments raised by Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, Lacson said the Supreme Court had already ruled that the Senate’s constitutional duty as an impeachment court was different from its functions as a legislative body.
This was the same position taken by Representative-elect Chel Diokno of Akbayan party list.
He said the Senate “cannot escape” its constitutional duty through limitations that it had thrust upon itself in the impeachment trial of Duterte, in which he would likely serve as one of the House prosecutors along with Representative-elect Leila de Lima.
In a statement, Diokno said that the question of whether the complaint could be carried over to the 20th Congress “could have been avoided” had the Senate started the trial immediately after the transmittal of the articles of impeachment in February.
READ: ‘Illegal’ moves at play to stop Sara Duterte trial
Separate oath
Diokno maintained that the Senate had a “constitutional duty to conduct the trial and cannot simply dismiss it through a resolution,” even with the little time left for the 19th Congress.
Like other legal experts, he believes that impeachment is a “separate, distinct, and special” function of the Senate that does not expire alongside the termination of one Congress.
In Pimentel Jr. v Joint Committee of Congress, the Supreme Court ruled in June 2024 that nonlawmaking functions assigned to the Senate by the 1987 Constitution were unaffected by a change in Congress and its membership.
That is the reason senators must take a separate oath to serve as impeachment judges, said Diokno, a former law dean of the De La Salle University (DLSU).
“That is also why the Constitution requires that impeachment trials be conducted ‘forthwith’—because the Senate will be performing a unique judicial function commanded by the Constitution in order to hold our highest public officials accountable,” he added.
Clamor also from DLSU
Faculty members of DLSU’s department of political science and development studies added their voices to those demanding that the Senate immediately try Duterte.
They said that the senators’ “continued inaction not only erodes public trust in our democratic institutions but also makes a mockery of the mechanisms for accountability enshrined in our Constitution.”
They called Duterte ally Dela Rosa’s resolution a “deliberate foot-dragging (that) reflects an active political maneuvering using a democratic institution that is meant to secure accountability, specifically of a high government official alleged to have committed high crimes and betrayed public trust.”
“Unless the 19th Senate fulfills its responsibility, they will enable impunity and accelerate the decay of our democratic norms,” said the professors, who include former Rep. Erin Tañada and Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes.
“The failure to act decisively now will be remembered not as a neutral lapse in procedure, but as a conscious betrayal of constitutional order,” they warned.
UP Law statement
On Thursday, 120 faculty members of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law called on the Senate not to abandon its constitutional duty to proceed with Duterte’s impeachment trial as her supporters move to dismiss the case against her.
“A premature dismissal will undermine the core democratic principle of checks and balances,” the UP Law faculty said in an open letter to the senators. “In contrast, proceeding with the impeachment trial will uphold the Senate’s constitutional mandate on public trust and accountability.”
“As teachers and scholars of the law, we believe that the Senate’s dismissal without hearing even a single witness will mean abandonment of its proud tradition as an august chamber and permanently alter our system of checks and balances,” they said.
