Senate on Trial

By Artchil B. Fernandez

The Senate, according to the Constitution, should preside over the impeachment trial of an impeached public official—in the current case, Vice President Sara Duterte. It turned out, it is not Sara Duterte who is on trial now but the Senate.

Today, the Senate is the most lambasted and heavily criticized branch of government. In its 108-year history, the Senate has always been the abode of statesmen and is often looked up to as the bastion of the rule of law, decency, statesmanship, and political maturity. Senators used to be intellectual giants, providing guidance and wisdom to the nation, especially in troubled times.

From its lofty position in the political order, the Senate has fallen to the lowest level in recent years. Political and intellectual heavyweights like the illustrious Lorenzo Tañada, Claro Recto, Jose Diokno, Jovito Salonga, and Ninoy Aquino in the pre-Martial Law era, and Raul Roco, Nene Pimentel Jr., Joker Arroyo, and Teofisto Guingona in the post-EDSA regime once walked the hallowed halls of the Senate. Presently, the Senate is populated by clowns, dolts, the morally bankrupt, and literal jokes and morons.

Garbage in, garbage out. A tree is known by its fruit. Judging from the decision of the Senate—now sitting as an impeachment court—to remand the impeachment case of Sara Duterte to the House, the Senate begot a rotten fruit. The decision of the Senate not only brought it to a new low but also pushed the country to the edge of a political precipice, creating a constitutional crisis. If the Constitution is no longer obeyed by senators, who else will follow the laws of the country? The door is open for chaos and anarchy.

The abominable, repulsive, and vile decision of the Senate to once again delay the impeachment trial of Sara Duterte deeply alarmed constitutional and legal experts in the country. Never before in the history of the nation have public officials—senators at that—ignored the Constitution and the rule of law for naked partisanship and self-serving purposes. In the old days, senators had the decency to mask and hide their partisanship in deference to delicadeza and a sense of public shame. Now, senators are shameless and brazen in their bias, flaunting and publicly displaying it. How times have changed.

The nasty and reprehensible behavior of the senators—eighteen of them, to be exact—was severely condemned by the country’s top constitutional experts. The Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa) slammed the Senate for its apparently illegal and unconstitutional act. In a statement, Philconsa said the action of the Senate to remand the impeachment complaint “raises grave constitutional questions and challenges the integrity of the impeachment process.”

Philconsa said the Senate cannot evade its constitutional mandate and called on the Upper Chamber to “uphold its constitutional duty and proceed with the impeachment trial in accordance with the Constitution and the rule of law.” The group warned that “any act or device that circumvents this duty gravely imperils our democratic institutions.” Senators were reminded by the group that “impeachment is the people’s mechanism to enforce accountability of public officials. It must not be thwarted by procedural invention or partisan maneuver.”

Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, Philconsa chairperson, told the senators that what they did “may constitute grave abuse of discretion and risks undermining the most fundamental principle of our constitutional democracy: that Public Office is a Public Trust.” He emphasized that “the accountability of public officials cannot be overstressed—and must never be evaded through procedural artifice.” Puno further argued that “once the Senate is clothed with jurisdiction as an impeachment court upon receipt of the articles of impeachment, that jurisdiction cannot be lost or suspended by mere procedural acts. It remains until final resolution or dismissal by the court itself.”

Artemio Panganiban, another former chief justice, also disagreed with the Senate’s action. “With due respect to the majority, I believe the remand and the required certification do not have any constitutional, legal, or procedural anchors. There is no provision in the text of the Constitution granting the IC [impeachment court] the power or authority to remand unilaterally or of its own volition. Neither can such power be inferred from any of its provisions,” Panganiban wrote in his Inquirer column.

Panganiban pointed out that as senator-judges, senators should refrain from acting as lawyers for Sara Duterte. “THE SENATOR-JUDGES, in my humble opinion, should not lawyer for any party. They should maintain their credibility as independent and unbiased judges. They should just await the pleadings or actions by the parties and decide them under their ‘inherent’ judicial power.”

Veteran journalist Vergel O. Santos blasted the senators for their decision to remand the case of Sara Duterte. “The Senate vote… constitutes the most egregious and immoral form of official corruption: It junked the Constitution and robbed the people of justice! [It] also betrays a sense of impunity unobserved in our time, an arrogant confidence among those corrupt senators that they are untouchable, themselves exempt from the force of law and justice. [Those senators’] faces should be pasted on every wall, as only the most wanted criminals deserve, and let burn in the nation’s memory, lest their crime be lost on the next generations,” he wrote in a Rappler article. He finds the action of the Senate “revolting,” an “obscene conspiracy.”

Due to its patently unconstitutional and illegal act, the Senate—not Sara Duterte—is currently on trial. Its moral authority as an impeachment court has been seriously compromised. Senators like Robin Padilla, Bato dela Rosa, and Imee Marcos have shamelessly brandished their unwavering loyalty to the Dutertes.

The Senate today is a damaged institution, bereft of integrity and credibility.