Senate Signature Drive on for VP Impeachment Trial

4 Senators Sign Resolution

- By MARC JAYSON CAYABYAB

Four senators have so far signed a draft resolution expressing the sentiment that the Senate wants the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte to proceed.

Sen. Risa Hontiveros, one of the four signatories, denied they were courting a constitutional crisis by calling for a defiance of the Supreme Court decision declaring the Articles of Impeachment against the Vice President unconstitutional.

She said they hope to gather more signatures ahead of the Aug. 6 schedule for the senators to discuss in open plenary session — not as an impeachment court — what to do with the impeachment complaint following the high court's decision.

"Nobody wants a constitutional crisis here, a political gridlock or a deadlock, as claimed by some observers. That's why we're trying to figure these days, these weeks how the Senate can properly act," she said in Filipino. "And this, we're now carefully examining — and present in full before the plenary by Aug. 6," she said at the Kapihan sa Senado forum yesterday.

Hontiveros said Sen. Francis Pangilinan is in charge of drafting and circulating the resolution. The other signatories are Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III and Sen. Bam Aquino.

Pangilinan in a statement said he had shown the draft resolution to the other senators who promised to “review” it.

‘Grossly unfair’

In the draft resolution, the senators cited the position raised by former SC associate justice Adolf Azcuna calling the court’s ruling on Duterte impeachment “legally correct” but “grossly unfair.”

The ruling blamed the House of Representatives for violating the one-year bar rule, which the court redefined, making the impeachment requirements more stringent.