Two heads not better than one

The Filipino people have a ringside view in the on-going impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. Videos and pictures, more than speeches, tell us where power actually sits. While watching the live coverage of last Monday’s opening of the impeachment trial, there is the Senate President, Sherwin Gatchalian, at the dais.

But the Senate chief is not holding the gavel of the Senate impeachment court.

By a vote of 12-8 of the senator-judges, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero got elected as the presiding officer of the Senate impeachment court. But Escudero’s election did not come easy for him. Days before the impeachment trial opened, he crossed from the minority to the new majority. Senate minority leader Alan Peter Cayetano vigorously tried to block it. Cayetano objected spiritedly – literally – to stop it. But Cayetano’s efforts were in vain to prevent his fellow senator-judges from committing possible “bending” of the impeachment rules spelled out in our country’s 1987 Constitution.

If the titular head of the bloc surrenders his own gavel on opening day of the Senate impeachment court, who actually runs the bloc? Gatchalian, as the sitting Senate President, seemingly presided over his own diminishment and called it procedure.

Cayetano argued the Constitution’s text names a presiding officer for only one impeachment scenario: when the President of the Republic is on trial, the Chief Justice presides. For every other case, he cited, the text is silent. But the framers were not, he insisted.

Elder sister, senator-judge “Ate” Pia Cayetano, chimed in with younger brother’s objection and quoted from the records of the 1986 Constitutional Commission (ConCom) that drafted our country’s Charter. The two Cayetano senator-judges pointed to an amendment expressly designating the Senate president that was “withdrawn – not rejected.” They both believed it was “withdrawn” because the ConCom commissioners thought the matter was too obvious to write down.

Practice honored that understanding for four decades without a single deviation. Retired Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Hilario Davide presided over the impeachment trial of former president Joseph Estrada. Then Senate president Juan Ponce-Enrile presided over the impeachment trial of the late SC Chief Justice Renato Corona. Escudero himself, as Senate president, presided over the first impeachment complaint of VP Sara filed during the 19th Congress in February last year.

Escudero presided until it crossed over to the 20th Congress in July last year. Escudero’s controversial interpretation “to act forthwith” was later vindicated by the subsequent SC ruling that junked the first impeachment case of VP Sara. As Senate president in August 2025, he presided when the chamber voted to archive the first Articles of Impeachment against the Vice President, killing that case.

The framers of our Constitution left the Senate president‘s role unwritten because they trusted the chamber to understand it.

Escudero was removed as Senate president at the height of the alleged “ghost” flood control scandal. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) subsequently investigated but later cleared him of a P30-million campaign donation from the president of one of the top flood control contractors implicated during the Senate Blue Ribbon hearing.

However, the Comelec reopened the case against Escudero based on the new evidence presented by private complainants. He is entitled to the presumption of good faith. But politics does not run on presumptions. It runs on what people see.

For the first time in our constitutional history, an impeachment court voted its gavel away from the Senate president. It could do so only because of a rule amended weeks before trial – adopted at the June 3 session attended by exactly 12 senators. That session remains under challenge before the High Court in the petition earlier filed by Cayetano et. al.

As Escudero himself declared after his installation as presiding officer of the Senate impeachment court, he “did not seek nor asked” for it. In fairness to him, it was Sen. Panfilo Lacson who earlier raised the possibility that Escudero, being a lawyer, might be tapped as presiding officer for the impeachment trial.

A group of lawyers led by Israelito Torreon filed an urgent petition at the SC yesterday seeking to stop the Senate impeachment court from continuing with the trial against VP Sara until the questions on the June 3 rules of procedure on impeachment trials and Escudero’s election as presiding officer have been resolved.

If Gatchalian is the lawful Senate President, then 40 years of practice and the framers’ evident intent were discarded by his own majority, with his consent. If the latest Senate reorganization was void, as petitioners argued, then the rule under which Escudero presides was never validly adopted at all, Cayetano warned.

The public is meanwhile asked to treat the season’s other events as coincidences. Another senator was arrested in which a vote of senator-judge needs to be counted. On the eve of the impeachment trial, Sen. Rodante Marcoleta was arrested on alleged plunder over a P75-million election campaign contribution last year.

Much earlier, minority bloc member Sen. Jinggoy Estrada was charged also before the Sandiganbayan and currently detained in Payatas jail for plunder on alleged kickbacks from “ghost” flood control projects. A third member of the Senate minority bloc, Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, remains in hiding to avoid being served with Interpol arrest warrant. Thus, the number of senator-judges is cut down from 24 to 21.

On the first day Escudero unilaterally declared they will abide by the Constitution: 16 senator-judges to convict an impeachable official. At the resumption of the VP Sara’s trial, Lacson rightfully questioned if the presiding officer already made a ruling without first taking up the matter with the entire Senate impeachment court.

Perhaps these were coincidences. Democracies, however, are not sustained by asking citizens to ignore what they see. They are sustained by giving citizens reason to trust it.

A contested tribunal decision wounds whichever verdict it delivers. Convict, and the defense will say the court was rigged from its first gavel. Acquit, and the prosecution will say the fix was visible from day one. Then two heads are not better than one.