Crying to the ICC

“If we add the latent revelations where the ICC is essentially impotent over a non-member… then the ICC’s relevance to us falls even further in the face of these questions of jurisdiction.

The recent decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the cases filed before it by two former officials under Benigno Aquino III simply adds to the unravelling list of weaknesses of the court with regard to patently partisan polemics brought before it by individuals with an insidious political agenda.

While we believe the ICC remains relevant in some parts of the world where state criminality still exists and there are indeed a number of countries where recourses for justice and redress save for that dictated by the whims of one or a select few virtually do not exist, in sovereign countries such as the Philippines, our democracy is certainly not one of them. Ours is served by a democratically elected president with a freely elected and operating legislature and an independent functioning judiciary.

As an institution that intervenes where justice is not only working but where equity is a principal objective renders the ICC irrelevant and diminishes its importance.

Allow us to list powerful and major Philippine institutions that empower the people and provide available avenues of recourse and redress, all of which render the ICC effectively irrelevant at this time, save for an insidious few who would attempt to weaponize it for partisan ends.

First we have a two-chamber legislature each of which has powerful oversight committees that over the years have been accessible avenues to not simply hold both government and private entities openly accountable but in many specific cases these committees have actually spearheaded the filing of charges against accused criminals on behalf of the aggrieved public.

Open and public in their deliberations, and adhering not simply to rules of court, from the admission of evidence to the virtual prosecution of the accused, but also paralleling actual judiciary proceedings, we see how these dogged committees have afforded the public an optional justice system.

Second, we have a substantially cleansed and recently exorcised judiciary where, under the current administration, we’ve taken brave and bold steps to surgically cut out politically-appointed cancers and in its place install long experienced magistrates of proven probity who have exercised fair and equitable judgements as sitting judges in the lower courts.

The first step for any ICC investigator whose mandate is predicated by the absence of a judicial system should be to determine whether, indeed, the system is non-existent.

Had the ICC rapporteurs first investigated the character and the tremendous powers of our judiciary, it’s recent history of decisions and the unquestioned probity of its men and women magistrates, then even under their dim five-watt bulbs they would have seen that the reports they were being fed from partisan and politically motivated critics of the government are substantially falsehoods. Justice remains in the good hands of the current judiciary.

The third institution is the President himself. The ICC was created to provide a venue of last resort for those who have no powers, no voice and no means to protect themselves from despots and dictators. Far from the tyrant the opposition paints him to be, Duterte was democratically elected and his mandate now has increased exponentially beyond his popular and historic 2016 warrant.

This is both undisputed and constantly validated.

If we add the latent revelations where the ICC is essentially impotent over a non-member and what issues brought to it must be within the territorial land mass of a member state, then the ICC’s relevance to us falls even further in the face of these questions of jurisdiction.

On the anti-illegal drugs issue, we have a working judicial system where redress can be raised. On the West Philippine Sea issue, the ICC’s non-jurisdiction says it all.

These complaints brought before the ICC by the opposition highlight the ICC’s irrelevance to our current condition. What a crying shame. The apparent idiocy of the appellants’ gambit to shame us using the ICC reveal their objectives as patently partisan and political.