By Herbert Vego
SENATOR Bong Go, a news report says, has begged the people to speak out against the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which is hell-bent on probing the bloody war on drugs of his “boss,” former President, Rodrigo Duterte.
Obviously, Go was desperately appealing for “people power” aimed at compelling the ICC to stop.
The deafening silence of the people, however, has unmasked the fakery of Duterte’s exaggerated approval ratings (as high as 90%) in the surveys during his presidency.
Nevertheless, incumbent President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr is leading his minions in denouncing ICC “intervention” as a “threat to our sovereignty”.
Alas, this early, Marcos seems to have caught amnesia. Therefore, let him be reminded that he was one of the 17 senators who went along with then Pres. Noynoy Aquino in ratifying the Rome Statute on August 30, 2011, confirming the jurisdiction of the ICC in the Philipines over crimes of international concern, such as war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression whenever our own justice system fails.
The ICC has received voluminous documents imputing state-sponsored crimes against humanity during the Duterte era, notably extra-judicial killings (EJKs) and miscarriage of justice. Among them are “confessions” of police officer Arturo Lascañas and others who served Duterte during his term of office as Davao City mayor.
Duterte must have thought that his withdrawal from ICC jurisdiction on March 17, 2018 would disable its jurisdiction against the Philippines. However, as stated in Article 127 of the Statute, crimes committed before effectivity of the withdrawal and one year after still fall under ICC jurisdiction.
No less than our Supreme Court unanimously affirmed its conformity in a 15-0 decision released on July 21, 2021:
“Even if it [the Philippine government] has deposited the instrument of withdrawal, it shall not be discharged from any criminal proceedings. Whatever process was already initiated before the International Criminal Court obliges the state party to cooperate.”
If he had nothing to fear, why did Duterte attempt to run away from ICC jurisdiction?
And why has his successor, Marcos, also opted to ignore the Supreme Court? Is he afraid of somebody who once called him a “weak leader”?
Could it be that he had made a “deal” with Duterte to help him win the presidency against Leni Robredo and nine other aspirants in the May 9, 2022 election?
Take note that upon losing the vice-presidency narrowly to Leni Robredo in 2016, he filed a protest on allegation that Smartmatic – contracted operator of the automated polls system — had cheated him, but this resulted in Robredo even increasing her lead.
If he knows in his heart that his predecessor had nothing to do with the extrajudicial killings that snuffed more than 6,000 victims during the Duterte presidency, shouldn’t both of them have urged the ICC to intervene and let the guilty suffer the consequences?
So far, he has not even lifted a finger to get former Senator Leila de Lima out of prison, where she has languished for six years over unproven “partnership” with drug lords. All but one of the witnesses have already recanted their false affidavits against her.
The De Lima case has become one of the reasons why the European Union has threatened to revoke its trade preferences to the Philippines. Under the EU’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) scheme, the Philippines enjoys duty-free entry of more than 6,200 products exported to Europe.
In a September 17, 2023 resolution, the European Parliament called on the European Commission “to immediately initiate the procedure which could lead to the temporary withdrawal of GSP+ preferences.”
Pres. Marcos, take note, has travelled to nine countries in the past eight months to campaign for new foreign investments. Aside from billions of dollars of mere pledges, however, I don’t know what else he could boast of.
Thus, he has no choice but to eventually yield to ICC for his own and his people’s welfare.
