What Happened to Sara’s Impeachment? ‘Na-tokhang sa Senado’

By Joey Salgado

Online, the Duterte camp hailed the Senate vote to return the articles of impeachment against Vice President Sara Duterte as a masterstroke. And it was. It was a masterstroke of political opportunism, of cloaking the surrender of a constitutional duty in convoluted legal language.

During the extended debates Tuesday night leading to the disgraceful decision, the non-lawyer senators kept referring to the lawyers among them as “legal luminaries” from whom they would welcome the opportunity to be enlightened. Similar to the debate over the definition of “forthwith,” the non-lawyer senators needed only to consult their dictionary to know that the term was inaccurate.

Merriam-Webster defines a luminary as “a person of prominence or brilliant achievement.” Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., a bar topnotcher and rehabilitated Duterte supporter, had his moment of redemption that night. But from Senate President Francis Escudero and Majority floor leader Alan Peter Cayetano who were steering the discussions, there was deliberate vagueness, obfuscation, and misdirection. The only other brilliance on the floor was the reflection on Senator Ronald de la Rosa’s bald, shiny head, brilliant from head polish, on a body displaying the swagger of a conquering marauder, the chief implementor of “tokhang” triggering a summary execution on the Senate floor. Na-tokhang ang impeachment.

The vote was a victory for Vice President Sara Duterte. And this cold reality cannot be sugarcoated by the clarification, smugly stated by Escudero, that returning the articles of impeachment to the House and asking them to answer two questions, like grade school students, was not a termination of the proceedings.

Technically, he was correct. The impeachment trial will proceed and will cross over to the 20th Congress, a statement that satisfies the President, who earlier that day expressed his view that a crossover was a certainty. But it also opens the Senate action to legal challenges, as pointed out by Pimentel. Once it reaches the Supreme Court, the complaint enters a rabbit hole where legal minds and powerful forces will certainly move to influence the court’s decision. That the high tribunal is dominated by appointees of detained former president Rodrigo Duterte, the impeached Vice President’s father, does not provide comfort for some sectors.

Preview

There’s another reason why I do not share the guarded optimism over the fate of the impeachment complaint in the 20th Senate.

Tuesday night was a preview of how Escudero will preside over the trial, how his faithful lieutenant Cayetano will maneuver in the guise of eliciting consensus, and how the senator-judges will vote.

There was no cold neutrality on the floor, only fierce partisanship. The Duterte senators wanted to dismiss the complaint even before the Senate was constituted into an impeachment court. They acted more like defense lawyers than senator-judges. These senators cannot be bothered with something as inconvenient as evidence. Three of them even refused to wear their impeachment robes, as if it were a garland of garlic.

The crossover will not stop the efforts of Duterte senators to junk the complaint. The entry of another Duterte defender, Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, more than compensates for the expected arrest of De La Rosa on the strength of an arrest order from the International Criminal Court (ICC). In their tally, even with the new set of senators, they have the numbers to acquit.

Mission accomplished

By sidestepping precedents, tradition, and process, the Senate has abandoned its role as a check on the abuses of public officials.
From now on, every action taken by the Senate to exact accountability from public officials will be met with skepticism. Their action sends the message that public officials can misuse confidential funds, play loose with the taxpayers’ money, and plot to kill another public official as long as he or she has enough allies in the Senate.
With their vote, the Senate has earned the reputation as a chamber that exercises selective prosecution and dispenses selective justice.

At one point during the debate, Pimentel reminded Escudero and Cayetano that their wordings need to be precise before it can be presented as a motion for the senators to vote on. Escudero, his microbladed eyebrows raised, replied that the intent was to enhance the records of the Senate, so future generations can read how the discussion evolved. But at that moment, most of the senators, Escudero especially, did not concern themselves with the longview of history. They know, from recent experience, that history can be rewritten and tarnished images rehabilitated.

What mattered that night was the personal merging with the political. The Duterte senators succeeded in saving Sara Duterte, and Escudero is almost certain to keep the Senate presidency in the 20th Congress.

This article also appears in Rappler