Are Marcos’ minions in Congress plotting to amend the Constitution?

THE controversy over whether the Senate can reduce the votes required to convict an impeached official from 16 to 14 raises a question far more consequential than the fate of Vice President Sara Duterte. If senators can change an explicit numerical requirement of the Constitution through their own procedural rules, what prevents Congress from similarly altering other safeguards — including, and especially, the rules for amending the Constitution itself?

Article XI, Section 3(6) of the 1987 Constitution states: “No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”

With 24 sitting senators, that requires 16 affirmative votes. It does not say two-thirds of those present, those voting, or those who have not abstained. The phrase is “all the Members.”

The proposed reduction to 14 would require excluding some senators from the denominator. Disguised as a technical adjustment, it raises a fundamental issue: Can a chamber’s procedural rules change the voting requirements categorically stipulated by the Constitution? If so, the implications extend well beyond impeachment. Numerous constitutional provisions demand specified fractions of all members precisely because certain powers should not be exercised by an ordinary political majority.

Reducing the threshold by a mere majority vote of its members is a very dangerous precedent for tampering with the Constitution itself.

The Constitution’s Article XVII, Section 1 permits Congress to propose constitutional amendments or revisions upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members. Article XVII, Section 3 separately provides for calling a constitutional convention by a two-thirds vote of all members of Congress. These provisions determine how the fundamental law may be changed.

If the Supreme Court does not rule unconstitutional the Senate’s majority ruling to lower the threshold for impeachment, Marcos’ minions there would claim that Congress has also the right to reduce the denominator in computing how the three-fourths, or two-thirds, are determined in calling for an amendment of the Constitution. The easy path here is for them to accept the interpretation that three-fourths of each chamber would have to vote to amend the Constitution.

That would be easy in the case of the House of Representatives, since it consists of political pygmies, or easy-to-bribe politicians. Marcos may find it more difficult to get a three-fourths vote in the Senate, all of whom are elected nationally and most members think they could be president someday.

So, what does he do? Do what he has managed to do in Sara’s impeachment: Jail or force to be a fugitive uncooperative senators, and get the Senate to rule that only present members of the chamber can vote whether to amend the Constitution or not.

Marcos, therefore, can call for a constitutional convention with just 14 senators out of the sitting 24 senators. And as happened in the 1970 constitutional convention and 1986 Constitutional Commission, it would be easy for a president to control such bodies.

Am I too suspicious to believe that Marcos would get a constitutional assembly or convention to amend the Constitution so that our system changes into a parliamentary one, which would allow him to be Prime Minister to perpetuate his rule? He is really the son of his father.

The move to lower the threshold in Sara’s impeachment therefore would seem to be preparing the ground for this regime to amend the Constitution to perpetuate itself in power in 2028.

I am amazed that Marcos’ minions in the Senate had the gall to lower the number of votes needed to convict Sara. Our Constitution has an internal consistency in providing for the thresholds for major Senate decisions:

Treaties — Article VII, Section 21 provides that no treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective without concurrence by at least two-thirds of all Senate members. Its wording closely parallels the impeachment clause.

Treaties can impose obligations involving national security, military cooperation, territorial interests, foreign relations and economic policy. The Constitution requires more than a simple majority because treaty commitments may bind the country long after the administration that negotiated them has left office. A Senate able to adjust the denominator could declare an agreement approved that did not obtain the normally required 16 votes.

Veto — Article VI, Section 27(1) requires two-thirds of all members of each chamber to override a presidential veto. The requirement embodies the separation of powers: Congress may enact a measure despite presidential objections, but only if it assembles a supermajority in both chambers. As in voting in the impeachment, this article stipulates two-thirds of all members, not of participating members.

Expulsion — Article VI, Section 16(3) permits each house, with concurrence of two-thirds of all its members, to suspend or expel a member. All of its members, not members present. The supermajority is an important protection against a ruling coalition’s use of disciplinary proceedings to eliminate opponents.

It is important to emphasize that Article XI, Section 3(3-4), the impeachment process, uses a different threshold for the House of Representatives: at least one-third of all its members may approve articles of impeachment or file a verified complaint or resolution under the specified procedure. In the Senate, two-thirds of members are required to convict.

The Constitution deliberately makes impeachment easier to initiate than to conclude in conviction. That difference recognizes the gravity of removing an official, particularly one elected by millions of citizens — in Sara’s case, 32 million voted to make her vice president, or 62 percent of those who cast their ballots.

A minority large enough to represent one-third of the House may initiate the process, but a much broader Senate consensus must be assembled to convict. Impeachment is not a parliamentary vote of no confidence, in which an incumbent falls simply because a temporary majority has turned against him or her.

If the House likewise claimed the power to subtract abstaining or absent representatives from “all its Members,” it could attempt to transmit articles of impeachment with fewer affirmative votes. The protection against politically motivated proceedings would then be weakened at both ends: initiation in the House and conviction in the Senate.

The Constitution’s framers were very well aware of the distinction between total membership from attendance. Article VI, Section 16(4), for example, permits one-fifth of the members present to require the “yeas” and “nays” on a question to be entered in the journal. That wording is different from “all the Members.” Such distinctions are not ornamental. They identify different constitutional denominators for different governmental actions.

More importantly, the framers couldn’t have missed the fact that the US Constitution categorically says that to convict, “two-thirds of members present.” The framers of our Constitution didn’t just follow the US precedent, and stipulated only “two-thirds of all members.”

The issue is ultimately whether the Constitution’s supermajorities are genuine limits on political power or numbers that legislators may adjust when inconvenient. If those entrusted to obey constitutional restraints can alter them through their own procedures, the restraints lose much of their meaning. The question is no longer merely whether 14 or 16 senators can convict Sara Duterte. It is whether the numerical safeguards of the Constitution remain safeguards at all.

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Are Marcos’ minions in Congress plotting to amend the Constitution?
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