Petitioners snub ICC orals

Malacañang on Tuesday expressed confidence that the new communication filed against President Rodrigo Duterte for alleged crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court (ICC) will not prosper.

This as the Supreme Court (SC) also started yesterday oral arguments on the petition against the Philippine withdrawal from the ICC which was snubbed by some opposition senators who were among the petitioners.

That left lawyer Rey Paolo Santiago in solitary defense of the petition claiming the withdrawal is unconstitutional. Santiago wants the withdrawal ordered by President Duterte to have the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate.

Associate Justice Mario Victor Leonen, however, asked Santiago if the President could not formulate his own foreign policy.

“Will you trust foreigners to rule on crime compared to the court—is there inability of our trial court to attend to human rights?” Leonen asked.

“The judiciary is able and can improve, we will have to rely on ourselves. That’s sovereignty and self-determination. And you want the court to issue a ruling? Why should we rule when we are satisfied that there are protection of human rights and are available?” to which Santiago admitted the Philippine court is functioning and countered his clients’ claims.

Religious group Rise Up for Life and for Rights and the families of alleged victims of extra-judicial killings (EJK) called on the ICC to indict Mr. Duterte for his bloody war on drugs and for “causing great sufferings to the victims and their families.”

They are also asking for an arrest warrant issued against the President and for them to be given protection pending the resolution of the case.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. simply shrugged off the issue. He clarified that the new communication cannot be considered a formal complaint just yet because “it doesn’t mean anything.”

“That’s not a complaint, that’s just a communication because it still has to be acted on by the ICC,” Roque said during a press briefing at the Palace.

“Anyone can file a communication. Even the Pope has a communication filed against him. My fearless prediction is it will not prosper because of the concept of complementarity. The ICC cannot move unless local courts have proven to be unable or unwilling to exercise jurisdiction over these complaints,” he added.

The new communication filed against the Chief Executive came five months after he announced the Philippines is pulling out of the Rome Statute that created The Hague-based tribunal.

Prior to that, a similar complaint was filed by lawyer Jude Sabio, counsel for retired Davao policeman Edgar Matobato, against the President. Matobato accused Mr. Duterte of wanting him killed when he was still Davao City mayor.

The President repeatedly insisted the ICC has no jurisdiction over him and that the Rome Statute cannot be enforced in the country for lack of publication in the Official Gazette as provided by law.

Meanwhile, National Union of People’s Lawyers national chairman Neri Colmenares expressed optimism the ICC will recognize the President’s accountability on the drug-related killings in the country.

Colmenares helped in filing another case against the President before the ICC.

The former party-list representative said while the President has not made a written order to kill, he may still be convicted as there have been precedents in the ICC, noting that the international court convicted people on grounds of command responsibility.

“No President has made a written order to kill. But the ICC has convicted others. ICC has convicted people on the ground of command responsibility,” Colmenares said.

The former Bayan Muna representative also believes that Duterte has full responsibility for the EJK in the country that saw thousands of alleged drug personalities and offenders dead.

Colmenares stressed that 4,410 up to 23,000 people were killed in the name of Duterte’s drug war. He noted these deaths were attributed to the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) Oplan Double Barrel campaign.

“We’re telling the ICC that local tribunals are unable to prosecute Duterte because the President is immune from suit,” Colmenares said. “Hopefully, they can see the logic in our reasoning.”

He added the alleged mass murders and rights violations under Duterte “are so grievous and so heinous that are of sufficient gravity to justify further action of the court,” according to the complainants.

It can be recalled that The Hague-based ICC earlier this year had launched a preliminary investigation into a separate complaint against Duterte for allegedly using killings to control crime, a tactic he also supposedly used during his 22 years as mayor of Davao City.

Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the Rome Statue which created the ICC.

The Philippines remains a party to the statute as the withdrawal will only take effect a year after it was filed, the complainants said.

“It is our hope that with the court taking jurisdiction of herein complaint, it may force President Duterte to reexamine, if not abandon, his distorted notion of mass murder to solve the country‘s drug and crime problem. The intervention of the ICC will save thousands more from slaughter,” the complainants said.