All eyes are now focused on the executive branch insofar as what will happen next in the tawdry saga of doomsday preacher Apollo C. Quiboloy.

Going by recent events, Quiboloy’s campaign to stave off arrest by both Houses of Congress has run its course. Congress will soon issue arrest orders.

All this, despite barriers, raised by his protective political “friends” who ended up shell-shocked upon realizing that they had little or nothing to show for their narcissistic belief that they could hold domestic politics hostage.

A political miscalculation that definitely tarred some senators, earning them acidic rebukes for being absolutely oblivious to the fact that their jobs as elected senior legislators meant more than merely looking out for “friends.”

Nevertheless, Quiboloy’s tiffs with Congress are a prelude to his clashes with the executive branch in the forthcoming days.

Testing the executive branch’s mettle against the pastor and his allies will come once the United States formally requests Quiboloy’s extradition.

Quiboloy, seven members of his Kingdom of Jesus Christ, and one paralegal were indicted for human trafficking in California.

The trafficking case alleges that the religious group sent KoJC members to California using fraudulent means and forced them to work long hours, soliciting money they remitted back to the Philippines.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued federal arrest warrants in November 2021. Several defendants were arrested, but Quiboloy was never arrested.

Federal warrants are sealed, says a news report, “to ensure optimum effectivity in arresting the subjects” of a case.

 However, on 1 March, California Judge Terry Hatter Jr. unsealed the warrants and returns against Quiboloy and the other defendants upon the request of the US Attorney’s Office, which argued that unsealing the warrants was in order since some of the defendants were already in custody.

Unsealed warrants are significant. Besides making documents of the case public, unsealed warrants raise the possibility that the US government might soon request Quiboloy’s extradition. The US has an extradition treaty with the Philippines.

On this possibility, a news report cited the case of Israeli businessman Yuval Marshak, who was wanted in the US for wire fraud. The US government requested the unsealing of the warrant against Marshak to file a formal extradition request and to be able to share the arrest warrant with the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol).

Should the US file an extradition request, a local legal process will go into effect.

The Department of Foreign Affairs will first assess the extradition request, mostly on whether the offense committed in the US is extraditable. An offense is extraditable if the offense there can also be considered a crime here.

Should the DFA determine the offense extraditable, it will forward the request to the Department of Justice, which will then start the formal extradition proceedings in court.

If it finds the issue urgent, the US government can also request the Philippine government for a provisional arrest ahead of its extradition request.

In this case, the request will go straight from the US DoJ to the Philippine DoJ.

The country has yet to receive an extradition request for Quiboloy.

What is politically interesting about the extradition process is that under the treaty, if a person is being prosecuted in the Philippines, the government can decide to turn that person over to the US to finish the prosecution there. Similarly, the Philippines can also decide to postpone the extradition to finish the prosecution here.

A relevant pending local case happened to have been filed. Last 4 March, the DoJ reversed an earlier ruling of its prosecutors and ordered the filing of charges against Quiboloy for sexual abuse of a minor and qualified human trafficking in Davao City and Pasig City.

It is this case, as well as the overall extradition process, that will unleash fraught political firestorms and maneuverings by Quiboloy’s allies, necessitating equal responses from the executive branch.