Retired Justice Azcuna: 'All means all,' vote of 2/3 of all senators needed in VP trial

Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Adolfo Azcuna stood firm Wednesday on keeping all 24 senators in the constitutional base for an impeachment vote, departing from more contextual approaches offered by other former magistrates advising the Senate impeachment court.

Azcuna said the phrase “all the Members of the Senate” refers to membership itself, not the number of senators present or capable of participating when judgment is rendered in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.

“As long as they are members of the Senate, they constitute the denominator in computing the threshold of two-thirds, because all means all,” Azcuna said.

For Azcuna, allowing the denominator to shrink depending on attendance, detention, suspension or other circumstances would also allow the number needed for conviction to move during the proceedings.

“A threshold must be fixed, not variable. It must be determinable from the start,” he said.

He warned that reducing the voting base could dilute the supermajority safeguard built into impeachment, potentially bringing the votes needed for conviction closer to an ordinary majority.

Azcuna said the two-thirds requirement was intended to force proponents of conviction to secure support beyond a temporary political majority, considering that impeachment can remove an elected official before the end of a fixed term.

His interpretation differed from retired chief justice Reynato Puno, who favored reading the constitutional provision in context and considering circumstances that legally prevent a senator from functioning as a senator-judge.

Puno noted that the Constitution prescribed a two-thirds fraction rather than expressly fixing the required number at 16.

“The provisions of the Constitution should not be interpreted narrowly or pedantically, for the prescriptions therein are not mathematical formulas,” Puno said.

Retired chief justice Artemio Panganiban, meanwhile, focused on whether a senator-judge had sufficiently participated in the proceedings to independently evaluate the evidence before voting.

Azcuna drew a distinction between that question and the denominator itself.

He said absence from some hearings should not automatically disqualify a senator-judge from voting because the impeachment court is a tribunal of record, allowing members to review transcripts, documentary evidence and other records before deciding the case.

Whether an absent senator has sufficiently studied the proceedings to vote, Azcuna said, may be addressed by the Senate through its own rules without changing who counts as a member for purposes of the constitutional two-thirds requirement.

-Philippine News Agency