Mark Villar, facing graft complaints, breaks from minority on VP Sara threshold vote

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Mark Villar twice strayed from the Senate minority bloc on Wednesday, September 23, by abstaining from his bloc's bid to block the threshold vote, then joining the majority in lowering the bar for convicting Vice President Sara Duterte.

Villar was the only minority senator to take part in the second vote that sought to settle the question raised by Sen. Erwin Tulfo whether the 16-bar threshold for conviction should still hold given four senators' absence from the trial.

Thirteen senators including Villar voted in favor, while Presiding Officer Sen. Chiz Escudero cast the lone vote against overturning the ruling he himself issued when the trial opened in July.

The rest of the minority bloc members chose to boycott the proceedings and keep out of the chamber during the vote, namely Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, Sen. Pia Cayetano, Sen. Bong Go, Sen. Imee Marcos, Sen. Camille Villar and Sen. Robin Padilla. 

Cayetano earlier raised a point of order in an attempt to prevent the court from holding a vote at all. He argued the court had no authority to reopen the threshold in the middle of the trial and that the question belonged to the Supreme Court. 

To address Cayetano's point of order, Escudero divided the house and called for a vote. Thirteen senator-judges voted to shoot down Cayetano's appeal, while the five other minority senators present backed Cayetano. Villar abstained.

Both Mark and Camille Villar are among the members of their family facing criminal and administrative complaints the Ombudsman filed last Friday over PrimeWater Infrastructure Corp.'s water district deals. 

The agency found the joint ventures grossly disadvantageous to the government. It identified the senator, who served as public works secretary from 2016 to 2021 under then-President Rodrigo Duterte, as the company's beneficial owner.  

It was against this backdrop that Camille made a rare emotional interjection earlier Wednesday to urge her colleagues to stop invoking the criminal cases of the senators who have missed the trial. Two of the four, Senators Rodante Marcoleta and Jinggoy Estrada, are detained on nonbailable plunder charges.

"Lahat naman po ng wala dito, hindi naman po sila napatunayan na may sala. Hindi po sila plunderer. Hindi po sila magnanakaw," she said. (Those who are not here have not been proven guilty. They are not plunderers. They are not thieves). 

She was answering Sen. Erwin Tulfo, who had argued that the framers of the 1987 Constituion never anticipated senators facing plunder charges, since those in their time faced subversion, sedition and rebellion. 

Tulfo later said he had called no one a convicted plunderer and was merely speaking of the reality that four senators cannot take part in the trial.

Hours later, Camille left the chamber with the rest of the bloc. After the lunch break, she was seen briefly returning to the Chamber and conversing with her brother before leaving.   The court ruled on Wednesday that the two-thirds needed to convict will be computed only from senators legally and factually capable of taking part when the verdict is called. 

Excluded are senators who are detained, suspended, medically incapacitated or beyond the Senate's coercive processes and others similarly situated. 

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