Fatou Bensouda’s chances range from slim to none. These are the probabilities of her fatally flawed, gossip-ridden, unvalidated and unverified preliminary findings on the state’s direct criminal liabilities with regard to its policies and participation in the extrajudicial killings (EJK) purportedly surrounding the anti-narcotics advocacy of the government. In 2021, those findings should shift into higher gear as Bensouda’s swan song verse starts playing. To her misfortune, that is not going to happen.
Her song is likely to be a dirge. The death throes of the politically motivated assault by Bensouda coincide with her last hurrah prior to retirement but are not caused by it. Other fora and analyses have shown the imminent failure of the clandestine attempt at subversion by a band of political subversives behind Bensouda’s initiative. There lies their lie.
The most important factor for its quick demise is where the preliminary investigation undertaken on behalf of an international agency of which we are neither members nor have any obligation to cooperate with is based on a collection of barbs and accusations arrayed by a mob of malcontents, coup plotters and ambitious politicians out to subvert the government and retake lost power. This is Bensouda’s most substantial drawback far more potent than our mere non-membership.
The charges that the United States pin on Bensouda and which found their non-membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC) most eloquently define the fatal weakness of the accusations of crimes against humanity that she levels on the US and the Philippines.
While Bensouda alleges that there might be prima facie evidence to proceed with an actual investigation despite the lack of jurisdiction issue that basically pulls the rug from under her, the chances of her initiative entering the second and more critical investigation phase are nil given her findings had taken years and yet had simply resulted in nothing but pure speculation, propaganda and gossip.
But let us not rely on the defense of government counsel, and officials distraught over her findings. Let us jump to the accuser’s column and assess Bensouda’s chances from an accuser’s perspective.
In an attempt to grant equal attention and to surrender a quarter to government’s critics, the opposition, the yellow mob and even to the primary instigator who had started this assault on a non-ICC member’s sovereignty, allow us to cite the narrative of the very lawyer who broke bread among conspirators and putschists. He is the complainant who attempted to employ international fora and global public derision of our advocacy to protect our society from a narco-state spawned under Benigno Aquino III.
Prior to taking unthinking stances for or against Bensouda, we strongly recommend reading in full the official retraction letter of Atty. Jude Sabio. Draw a Venn diagram. Note the common set.
Now draw an organizational chart. See the direct and dotted-line conspiratorial linkages and complicity with two senators tied to the opposition. While exact dates and pay-offs might yield to fuzzy memory, complicity has been established, albeit thereafter enlivened by bitter betrayal among conspirators and the tightening of funding spigots.
But quod erat demonstrandum. Dismissed by the ICC or not, the retraction firmly establishes a subversive political agenda — the very fatal weakness the ICC unfortunately nourishes and is its undoing.
