The intent to surrender former President Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC) was crystal clear from the start as the Marcos administration refrained from filing cases against him to invite the intervention of the foreign tribunal.

By not prosecuting Duterte domestically, the government effectively invited ICC intervention to comply with the complementarity principle, according to an international legal expert.

Under that principle, provided in the Rome Statute which created the tribunal, the ICC is a court of last resort and it can act only when domestic courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute serious crimes.

While collusion with the ICC would be hard to prove, the opportunistic move to hand over the former president was shown by the reversal from non-cooperation to cooperation with the ICC, as chief defense counsel Nicholas Kaufman indicated in his opening statement at the start of the ICC confirmation of charges hearing.

Anti-Duterte groups praised this as a “monumental step,” while his allies called it a “betrayal” for political gain.

The politically motivated inaction to let an international body handle accountability tried to avoid domestic backlash since Duterte remains extremely popular.

The surrender violated Philippine sovereignty as the country has not been an ICC member since 2019 when its withdrawal from the Rome Statute took effect.

The hands-off legal policy on Duterte of the Marcos administration enabled the ICC intervention.

The main issue that will be decided in the pre-trial hearing is the ICC’s jurisdiction over Duterte, which the Marcos administration tried to facilitate through its legal maneuver.

Under the Rome Statute, complementarity encourages national accountability rather than outsourcing it. The Marcos administration’s inaction and eventual cooperation was a calculated move to dispose of a political rival.

Instead of bringing charges against Duterte in the local courts, Marcos’ cohorts held marathon hearings in Congress and focused their energy on impeaching his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte.

A Department of Justice review of 52 cases in 2021 transpired but it focused on procedural lapses rather than charges against Duterte.

There has been no comprehensive probe into Duterte’s role as the architect of the drug war despite continuous allegations of extrajudicial killings by Marcos’ allies in Congress.

When President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took office in 2022, largely as a result of an alliance with Sara Duterte, he initially explicitly rejected cooperation “in any form with the ICC,” asserting that a surrender of jurisdiction would be a “threat to sovereignty.”

As his political feud with the Duterte family escalated, however, Marcos shifted in late 2024, stating that he would not block ICC actions if Duterte “wanted” an investigation, while security officials emphasized the country’s commitment to International Criminal Police Organization obligations.

The strategy culminated in Duterte’s arrest and surrender to the ICC on 11 March 2025.

The lack of domestic cases directly triggered ICC admissibility under complementarity. In 2022, the ICC rejected a Philippine request for a deferral, finding local efforts inadequate.

Complementarity was central in the case of Duterte as the ICC proceeded after finding Philippine investigations insufficiently genuine or comprehensive, focusing only on low-level perpetrators and excluding high-level policymakers like Duterte, which was apparently done by design under Marcos.

In the larger scheme, the ICC has become a legitimate tool to cripple the rivals of Marcos and his clique to keep alive their goal of political perpetuity.