Impeachment scenarios

The past week was a wild and unpredictable political week, even by Philippine standards. The ongoing family war between the Duterte and Marcos political families took a strange and still questionable turn of events.

The week started with a very strong video message from President BBM reacting to the death threats of VP Sara Duterte. In his widely distributed televised statement, BBM swore that he would not allow the threats to continue without proper reaction from him. The discussion that followed was centered on how the Marcos family intended to defend itself or even, retaliate.

One emerging consensus was that an attempt to impeach VP Sara was just a matter of time. According to political pundits, the only reason to temporarily hold back the impeachment process was to determine if there were sufficient numbers to lead to a conviction. It requires a one-third vote of the House of Representatives to impeach the Vice-President. However, the actual impeachment will be decided by the Senate, which requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate, which means 16 of the 24 senators must vote for impeachment.

Political pundits were of the opinion at the start of the week that there were sufficient number of votes in the House to impeach the Vice President. There was no consensus, however, on whether there were sufficient votes in the Senate to convict VP Sara. I recall that during a luncheon with several of my politically aware friends, there was a debate on whether the numbers were sufficient to reach a two-thirds vote in the Senate.

The consensus was that the administration would wait until they were able to depend on a sufficient number of senators to convict the VP. Once the necessary numbers were there, the impeachment process would begin.

Then last Friday, there was literally a sudden change of tune by President BBM from his combative tone at the beginning of the week. He suddenly changed to a conciliatory message by saying that he had told his allies in the House that he did not favor an impeachment since it would distract from his work as President of the Republic.

On the same date, he appeared at the assembly of Armed Forces personnel and delivered a strong message that obviously was meant to counteract the apparent call of former president Duterte to the Armed Forces to rise up and “protect the people.” This has been interpreted by some observers as an indirect call to the Armed Forces for some kind of uprising.

This has led political observers to arrive at several possible scenarios. The first scenario is that President BBM is serious about his call to stop the impeachment process in order not to impede the development work of the government. There are other scenarios that are near-speculations at this point.

One active speculation is that presently there are not enough numbers in the Senate to convict VP Sara. The administration must therefore seek to convince other senators to switch sides to allow the impeachment process to be successfully completed. The other possibility is to wait till after the midterm elections and try to elect the necessary number of new senators and defeat the pro-Duterte senators.

This scenario could lead to very confused and passionate midterm elections, since the result could be literally a political life or death struggle for the Marcos and Duterte families.

Another possible scenario is that the Marcos family is playing a political game, with President BBM as the “good cop” presenting a reconciling figure to the public. He has also said recently that he has not entirely ruled out a possible reconciliation with the Duterte group even while the Vice-President has said that “there is no turning back” on their political estrangement.

When this Unity ticket split up earlier this year, BBM kept saying that there was no conflict; but it was the First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos who openly declared that there were wide political differences between the two families. In her remarks at a press con, VP Sara said that in the case of her possible death, she had given instructions that a revenge killing should focus on three people – BBM, the First Lady and Speaker Romualdez.

Through this arrangement, she has identified a triumvirate as the head of the “cabal” trying to have her eliminated from political power. If the “good cop” is BBM, then perhaps the “bad cop” will be one of the other two.

It is also very noticeable that there are other groups that have expressed their intention to continue with the impeachment process. The most prominent group is the Makabayan Group. In a very recent television interview, Bayan president Renato Reyes said that their group intends to continue with the impeachment process and made a public call to BBM not to interfere with any moves to continue the impeachment process.

At this point, I believe that any call for the political reconciliation between the Marcos and Duterte families would be futile. Amidst all these political fireworks, the most sensible call has been made by a group of business organizations which issued a joint public statement: “UPHOLDING THE RULE OF LAW.” In their recent public statement, they said: “In these challenging times, we, the undersigned organizations, call on our people to remain vigilant and steadfast in upholding the rule of law amidst political tensions. The strength of our institutions and the resilience of our democracy depend on our collective resolve to remain loyal to the Constitution and reject efforts to erode public trust in good governance.”