The arrest of former president Rodrigo Duterte shook the nation. As he flew out to the Hague, Netherlands late Tuesday evening, March 11, he left in his wake a country in disarray. His supporters are upset, others celebrate what looks like the beginnings of justice for the victims of his administration’s war on drugs, and everyone is fighting on Facebook like it’s 2016 again.
Duterte faces charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court (ICC), which investigated an estimated 30,000 deaths and alleged human rights violations related to the war on drugs and extrajudicial killings (EJKs). He arrived in the Hague on Wednesday evening, March 12.
Davao City Representative Paolo Duterte and his half-sister Veronica “Kitty” Duterte — both children of the former president and Davao City mayor — have filed petitions before the Supreme Court (SC) as they seek their father’s immediate release and return to the Philippines, stating the arrest was illegal and warrantless. They also assert that the ICC no longer has jurisdiction over the Philippines after Duterte withdrew the country from the Rome Statute in 2018.
However, the ICC says that it “retains jurisdiction over crimes allegedly committed in the Philippines while the country was a state party to the [Rome] Statute,” or the treaty establishing the ICC and its members. As such, it only investigated EJKs committed in the Philippines from November 1, 2011 to March 16, 2019, the period when the Philippines was a state party.
‘Nag-Boomerang’
According to political analyst Dr. Aries Arugay, chairman of the Department of Political Science in the University of the Philippines Diliman, the SC may not have the power to compel the ICC to release Duterte.
“The Supreme Court [of the Philippines] is not the Supreme Court of the ICC,” he told Rolling Stone Philippines. “And given that Duterte is no longer in Philippine territory, the Supreme Court has no power because [he] is no longer in the sovereign territory of the Philippines. In fact, if there should be some redress, [the Dutertes] should have filed it sa ICC mismo.”
“The problem there is, can Duterte’s lawyers and others go to the ICC [for redress] when the Philippines itself is no longer a state party?” Arugay added. He said Duterte might have been able to seek redress from the ICC if he had not pulled the country out of the international court. “The Supreme Court cannot issue orders to international institutions… Philippine institutions are sovereignty-bound.”
He also said that if the Philippines was still a state party in the Rome Statute, Duterte would have been detained in a local facility instead. According to him, a local detainment would have let Duterte rally his supporters in larger numbers.
“Nag-boomerang talaga sa kanya lahat ng ginawa niya,” Arugay remarked.
Duterte’s supporters have been mobilizing since Tuesday to protest his arrest. “It’s very sad that they do this great injustice to our former president. The more they persecute him, the more that the people love him,” Davao City Councilor Pilar Braga told Inquirer.
Former Department of Social Welfare and Development Undersecretary Luz Ilagan also said, “The sheer audacity, the naked abuse of power, the shameless disrespect for a former president of the land and the pathetic display of ignorance and abuse of authority bring to mind that history is repeating itself.”
In a video conference call streamed to Facebook on Tuesday, former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque called on Duterte’s supporters to gather at EDSA to stage a protest near Camp Crame in Quezon City.
In reaction, Arugay said, “Mind you, this is the same former president and his supporters who maligned People Power when they were in power. And now they’re invoking it.”
‘Undermining Democracy’
Arugay emphasized that ICC’s involvement in the country’s affairs is necessary but also indicative of an inadequate justice system. He explained, “Ang ICC naman kasi pumapasok lang if domestic avenues [for accountability] have been exhausted.”
“Did [Duterte] not deliberately and intentionally undermine political institutions, democratic norms, democratic principles?” he said. “So much so that impunity became the name of the game rather than democratic accountability.”
He added, “If Duterte did not [take] all those deliberate measures to undermine democracy, then the ICC would not have arrived at the conclusion that it would be difficult to hold him accountable in the Philippines, because [it shows that] institutions are working.”
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. previously asserted that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the Philippines and would not let it pursue the case against Duterte. But his allyship with the Duterte political family — especially with Vice President Sara Duterte, his running mate in the 2022 national elections — has suffered a split.
Still, he claims impartiality, stating on Tuesday evening that the Philippine government must cooperate with the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) because “if we don’t do that, they will no longer help us with cases involving Filipino fugitives abroad.”
Despite what Arugay calls “plausible deniability” on Marcos’ end, he said that the president could not call Duterte’s arrest his crowning achievement. “[Marcos] did not campaign for that. He campaigned the opposite. So he cannot claim it as a legacy,” he said.
