‘The Senate is missing a critical opportunity here.’
THE Senate disguised its cowardly act of not proceeding with the impeachment trial by hiding behind a “remand” order to apparently clarify two points.
One is if the one-year ban on impeachment cases has not been violated and the other, if the incoming 20th Congress will still be interested in pursuing the trial.
These could have been easily settled by a letter to the House, inviting the prosecution team to an informal, preliminary meeting or by pausing the remand order until the congressmen formally make their appearance before the Senate.
Instead of exploring these simple courses of action, 18 senator-judges opted for the path of least resistance, voting to send the impeachment complaint back to the House of Representatives.
The motivation behind this decision is as clear as day: the Senate doesn’t want to spend their adjournment days enduring “boring” impeachment hearings while putting their holidays on hold.
With half of them nursing grandiose plans for 2028, it becomes painfully obvious that they are unwilling to upset the Duterte camp or that religious group notorious for its block-voting.
The 18 senator-judges thought they are more intellectually superior than the House members who voted to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte.
An impressive number of the House signatories have passed the bar or are degree holders, in stark contrast to some senators who barely finished college, cannot compose a single sentence in English, and have not even mastered the GMRC.
Eleven of the 12-man House prosecution team are seasoned lawyers compared to only four of the senator-lawyers who joined the “remand” vote.
It should satisfy the public, and even senator-judges, that the House members know exactly what they are getting into. They are not impeaching an ordinary public servant but the second highest public official who, by reckoning, still wields considerable influence going by the results of the last elections.
The act of remanding is nothing short of a childlike middle finger from the Senate to the House, as if implying that the latter knows nothing about the law.
When the remand motion was made, an almost bizarre precedent was set. We witnessed sitting judges making a passionate motion to send back a case raffled off to them, directly to the complainant, at the behest of the defense.
Legal stalwarts Lorna Kapunan, Leila de Lima and Chel Diokno were aghast at such travesty that their collective sigh paints a Senate that has sunken to a new, shameful low.
One senator even went so far as belittling the significance of impeachment proceedings as “political,” asserting these would never bring food to the table.
Had the senator studied legal notes from his staff, he will know that an impeachment proceeding is always political and often about restoring public trust and accountability.
The P125 million in confidential funds spent in a record 11 days by the vice president in 2022, as discovered by our state auditors, will surely not restore public trust and accountability until she stands trial.
The staggering amount could have also eased the national hunger incidence, which now stands at a disturbing rate of 27.2 percent, the highest since 2020, according to a latest survey.
The Senate is missing a critical opportunity here.
After being perceived as an institution weakened by the alleged constant “bullying” of the lower chamber, the senator-judges could have delivered the “uppercut” right there on the Senate court.
They could have exposed and challenged — evidence by evidence — the infirmities of the impeachment complaint and cut to pieces the once proud House of Representatives.
