The Ontological Fixity of Membership and the Hermeneutics of Supermajority: An Inquiry into the Constitutional Denominator of “All the Members of the Senate"
The Ontological Fixity of Membership and the Hermeneutics of Supermajority: An Inquiry into the Constitutional Denominator of “All the Members of the Senate"
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™
September 20, 2026
The constitutional phrase “two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate” is not an arithmetic convenience but a deliberate ontological assertion. Justice Adolfo Azcuna’s insistence that nothing in the text fixes the threshold at the numeral sixteen, while simultaneously affirming that the present complement of twenty-four yields precisely that figure, discloses a deeper philosophical commitment: membership is a status that persists until it is formally extinguished. When the law does not distinguish, we do not distinguish. So long as a senator has not ceased to be a member—by death, resignation, or removal—he remains within the constitutive whole that supplies the denominator. The present Senate therefore continues to number twenty-four; its two-thirds remains sixteen. This is not rigid literalism but a recognition that institutional identity precedes and conditions the exercise of institutional power.I. Membership as Status, Not FunctionIn classical ontology, a member of a body is defined by formal inclusion within its constitutive structure, not by the contingent exercise of its powers. A senator who is detained, medically incapacitated, fugitive, or absent does not thereby forfeit membership any more than a justice of the Supreme Court on leave ceases to be a justice. The seat remains occupied; the office remains vested. Azcuna’s formulation is exact: “As long as he is a member of the Senate he has to be included in the two-thirds denominator. The only exception is if he dies, if he is removed from office or if he resigns.” The Constitution speaks of “Members,” not of “members present and voting,” nor of “members capable of performing judicial functions as senator-judges.” The absence of qualifying language is itself the qualification. Where the text is silent, silence is law.This status-based conception stands in deliberate contrast to a purely functional or participatory reading. The latter would treat the Senate as a fluctuating aggregate of those who happen to appear, thereby converting the supermajority safeguard into a variable dependent upon attendance, detention, or strategic non-participation. Such a reading would invert the constitutional hierarchy: the threshold would be determined by the very political forces the threshold was designed to restrain. Azcuna’s insistence upon fixity is therefore anti-majoritarian in the deepest sense. It protects the tenure of high officials against the temporary arithmetic of a partisan majority that might, by jailing, suspending, or deterring opponents, manufacture the very consensus the Constitution demands.II. Historical Contingency and the Precedent of VacancyThe 2001 episode supplies the necessary historical dialectic. In that year the Senate’s membership contracted through formal vacancies. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, elected senator in 1995, had become Vice President in 1998 and then President in January 2001; Teofisto Guingona, elected in 1998, was appointed Vice President in February; Raul Roco was appointed Secretary of Education; Orlando Mercado had earlier joined the Estrada Cabinet as Secretary of National Defense. Because no elected official may hold another public office incompatible with the Senate seat, these appointments effected resignations. The seats became vacant. The body of “all the Members” was thereby reduced. When the Senate concurred in four international agreements with thirteen affirmative votes, it did so not by inventing a new calculus but by applying the constitutional ratio to the diminished membership that actually existed. Thirteen was then two-thirds of the remaining members.The contrast with the present is decisive. Today there is, as yet, no vacancy. Detention, flight, medical leave, or unexplained absence does not vacate a seat. Only expulsion by the Senate itself, or formal resignation, or death, or appointment to an incompatible office, extinguishes membership. Until such an event occurs, the denominator remains twenty-four. To treat current non-participation as equivalent to vacancy is to collapse the distinction the Constitution carefully maintains between the existence of the office and the performance of its duties. The 2001 precedent therefore confirms rather than undermines Azcuna’s position: the ratio is constant; the base varies only when membership itself varies.
III. The Philosophical Stakes of the Fixed DenominatorThe deeper issue is the nature of constitutional language itself. The framers could have written “sixteen senators” or “two-thirds of those present.” They chose neither. By anchoring the requirement to “all the Members,” they fixed the denominator to the institutional whole rather than to the contingent assembly of participants. This choice reflects a classical republican anxiety about faction. A supermajority calculated solely upon those who appear can be engineered by the simple expedient of preventing appearance. A supermajority calculated upon the entire membership cannot. The threshold becomes a structural barrier against the conversion of temporary numerical superiority into permanent institutional dominance.Senator Alan Peter Cayetano’s caution against changing the rules mid-trial articulates the same principle in procedural form. Rules announced after the commencement of proceedings invite the suspicion that the standard is being adjusted to the desired outcome rather than the outcome being measured against a pre-existing standard. When the denominator becomes elastic according to the political convenience of the moment, the trial ceases to be an adjudication of evidence and becomes an exercise in arithmetic management. Impeachment, already a hybrid of the political and the judicial, risks degenerating into pure majoritarian will. The fixed denominator is therefore not a technicality; it is the institutional expression of the principle that removal of a high official requires a consensus that transcends the ordinary ebb and flow of partisan strength.IV. Esoteric Implications: Presence, Absence, and the Body PoliticThere is an almost metaphysical resonance in the debate. The Senate, like any corporate body, exists as a juridical person independent of the physical presence of its members. Its identity is not coextensive with the sum of those who happen to occupy its chambers on a given day. To exclude the absent from the denominator is to treat the institution as a mere aggregate of attending individuals rather than as a continuous legal entity. The Constitution, by speaking of “Members,” affirms the latter conception. Membership is a continuing relation to the whole; participation is a contingent exercise of that relation.This does not mean that the Senate is powerless to address prolonged non-performance. It may, under its own rules, declare a seat vacant for abandonment or expel a member. But until it does so, the status persists. The power to redefine membership mid-proceeding would place the institution in the paradoxical position of altering the very constituency that legitimates its judgment. The safeguard against abuse of impeachment would itself become subject to the will of those who control the chamber. Azcuna’s insistence that the threshold must be “fixed, not variable” and “determinable from the start” is therefore an assertion of institutional integrity against the temptation of opportunistic recalibration.V. Conclusion: The Law That Does Not DistinguishWhen the law does not distinguish, we do not distinguish. The Constitution does not distinguish between members who attend and members who do not, between members who are free and members who are detained, between members who vote and members who abstain. It distinguishes only between those who remain members and those who have ceased to be so. In the present configuration of the Senate there are still twenty-four members. Two-thirds of that whole is sixteen. The 2001 vacancies illustrate the sole legitimate occasion for alteration of the base: the formal extinction of membership. Until such extinction occurs, the denominator stands. To adjust it for political convenience would convert a constitutional safeguard into a contingent instrument of power. The philosophical force of Azcuna’s position lies precisely here: it preserves the institutional identity of the Senate as a continuous whole, and thereby preserves the supermajority as a genuine barrier rather than a manipulable arithmetic. In that preservation resides the deeper fidelity to the constitutional design—an fidelity that refuses to allow the body politic to redefine its own membership in order to achieve a desired judgment.
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Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™' s connection to the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) serves as a defining pillar of his professional journey, most recently celebrated through the launch of the ACC Global Alumni Network.As a 2003 Starr Foundation Grantee, Roldan participated in a transformative ten-month fellowship in the United States. This opportunity allowed him to observe contemporary art movements, engage with an international community of artists and curators, and develop a new body of work that bridges local and global perspectives.Featured Work: Bridges Beyond Borders His featured work, Bridges Beyond Borders: ACC's Global Cultural Collaboration, has been chosen as the visual identity for the newly launched ACC Global Alumni Network.Symbol of Connection: The piece represents a private collaborative space designed to unite over 6,000 ACC alumni across various disciplines and regions.Artistic Vision: The work embodies the ACC's core mission of advancing international dialogue and cultural exchange to foster a more harmonious world.Legacy of Excellence: By serving as the face of this initiative, Roldan's art highlights the enduring impact of the ACC fellowship on his career and his role in the global artistic community.Just featured at https://www.pressenza.com/2026/01/the-asian-cultural-council-global-alumni-network-amiel-gerald-a-roldan/
He is a Filipino multidisciplinary visual artist, printmaker, painter, independent curator, researcher, writer, and cultural worker whose practice spans contemporary art, curatorial work, and cultural advocacy. He has been active in the Philippine art scene since the late 1990s and has worked with galleries, museums, artist-run spaces, and international cultural organizations.
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A multidisciplinary Filipino artist, poet, researcher, and cultural worker whose practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, installation, and writing. He is deeply rooted in cultural memory, postcolonial critique, and in bridging creative practice with scholarly infrastructure—building counter-archives, annotating speculative poetry like Southeast Asian manuscripts, and fostering regional solidarity through ethical art collaboration.
He has been active in the Philippine art scene since the late 1990s and has worked with galleries, museums, artist-run spaces, and international cultural organizations.His practice appears to represent several interconnected concerns:
Cultural work as artistic practice. Roldan has argued that the labor of curating, organizing exhibitions, teaching, documentation, and cultural administration should be understood as creative work rather than merely support work. This perspective has been reflected in his writings and exhibitions.
Social and political engagement. His artworks frequently address politics, religion, faith, denial, courage, social inequality, and the everyday experiences of Filipinos. He has stated that he draws inspiration from Filipino cultural practices while approaching painting, printmaking, and installation from a conceptual perspective.Printmaking and conceptual art. Roldan is particularly recognized for his printmaking, with works shown internationally, including exhibitions in Japan and France. His practice also encompasses painting, photography, installation, and curatorial research.International cultural exchange. A significant milestone in his career was receiving an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2003, which enabled him to undertake research and create work in the United States while engaging with artists and curators internationally.
More broadly, Roldan's work represents an attempt to bridge artistic production, curatorial practice, scholarship, and cultural activism . His writings often emphasize postcolonial discourse, cultural memory, and the ethics of artistic collaboration, positioning the artist not only as a maker of objects but also as a builder of cultural infrastructure.
In the Philippine contemporary art context, he can be understood as representing the figure of the artist-curator-cultural worker —someone who contributes both through making artworks and through developing exhibitions, mentoring artists, and fostering institutional and independent cultural initiatives.
Recent show at ILOMOCA
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