On July 6, Senator Rodante Marcoleta was arrested hours before he was due to sit as a judge in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. That timing placed the meaning of “two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate” under a harsh political light. Thereafter, the “doom” for the rest of the minority members followed, as the same fate was imposed on them.
Article XI, Section 3(6) of the 1987 Constitution does not say two-thirds of those present, those available, or those permitted to enter the chamber. It says conviction requires “the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.” The Senate is constitutionally composed of twenty-four senators; two-thirds is therefore sixteen. That wording is not ornamental embroidery that may be trimmed whenever political arithmetic becomes inconvenient.
If attendance becomes the basis of the denominator, the courtroom may become the anteroom of the impeachment court. A senator could be prosecuted, detained on a non-bailable charge, suspended, intimidated, or driven into hiding—and every missing chair would suddenly make conviction easier. Marcoleta’s arrest on a plunder charge, along with the detention or legal troubles of other senators linked to Duterte, has made this danger more than an abstract classroom puzzle. Both Reuters and the Associated Press still reported the constitutional requirement as sixteen votes out of the twenty-four-member Senate, despite those absences.
This is where the gates of hell could be opened. Once political operators discover that removing bodies from the chamber can reduce the number of votes needed, the contest will no longer be confined to evidence and law. It will become a hunt for senators to neutralize before judgment day. The temptation would be enormous: if a vote cannot be won, a chair might simply be emptied.
I do not claim that every criminal case against a senator is fabricated, nor should senatorial office become armor against legitimate prosecution. Senators accused of crimes must face the courts, and lawful proceedings must establish guilt. But arrest does not erase an electoral mandate, detention does not amount to resignation, and an accusation does not perform the constitutional work of expulsion. A senator behind bars remains a senator unless the law has validly terminated that membership or the term itself has ended.
To me, the word “all” is the sentry posted at the door of the impeachment process. It prevents a temporary absence—voluntary, medical, judicial, or politically induced—from changing the weight of the constitutional standard. An absent senator may lose the opportunity to cast a vote, but the absent senator’s seat cannot be quietly converted into an additional vote for conviction. Otherwise, subtraction would masquerade as democracy.
Impeachment is already political by nature, but it must never become political hunting with handcuffs serving as counting devices. Conviction can remove an elected official and may lead to permanent disqualification from public office; such consequences demand a fixed and demanding threshold. I would rather see an impeachment fail for want of sixteen honest votes than succeed through a denominator made smaller by detention, coercion, or convenient absence. Constitutional safeguards prove their worth precisely when powerful people are impatient with them.
The sound course is simple: keep the threshold at sixteen votes while the Senate remains a twenty-four-member body, and decide every criminal accusation against a senator independently, promptly, and fairly. If a senator’s membership legally ends through death, resignation, expulsion, expiration of term, or another constitutionally valid cause, the consequences may then be examined under law—not invented through attendance sheets. Every chair must count, even when it is empty. That is how the Senate can close the gates before political necessity teaches hell how to count.
