2/3 OF WHAT NUMBER?

Filipino youth have been winning in math contests, given our significant Chinese genetics and the Xavier schools of the Jesuits. Yet for the past several days, the whole world of Filipinos became an arithmetic class for Grade 3 students. What is 2/3 of 24 senators? 16. What if a senator has died in the meantime, what is 2/3 of 23?  It is 15.33333 ad infinitum. No problem.  Our amicus curiae spiritistas, babaylans, manananggals and aswangs could easily come up with flying half-bodies in our own Epstein isles in the Pacific. We would need King Solomon as amicus curiae to help us with the math. No wonder King Solomon awarded the baby to the mother who would rather lose a baby than have a ½ of a child to bury. 

We almost had the same predicament when the friends of the impeachment court in the persons of former Chief Justices and an Associate Justice lectured on what the base number of senators would be  from which could be sourced the fraction of 2/3 enough to convict.  24 senators would have been a neat problem, and the answer would be an exact 16. But who are all the senators as the Philippine Constitution of 1987 demanded? The Aristotles and Platos of the Philippine judicial firmament agreed to disagree on the meaning of all of the Members of the Senate. Last I read, the number was 24.   Surely it meant all who are alive at the time of voting. Tsaka those who are not in prison. Tsaka those who are not abroad.  Tsaka those who are not hiding. Death has not been known to prevent Filipinos from voting, I must say.  Hereabouts, the dead have been voting for too long in local and national politics.  Methinks the wording of the Constitution is simple enough. There is much to commend the version that 16 votes is necessary to convict an impeached official. But then again, it is also reasonable that we only count those who are alive and attending the court hearings. Jury members in the United States are caged, so to speak, until they deliver a vote in a criminal case.  I think it was best that the jury system was not transplanted here.  Because we will never end debating how many are needed to convict the accused.  Touche’