HOTSPOT

Lots of news this week from Paris to Palestine, about prisoner swaps and presidential campaigns elsewhere, and regarding POGOs and pugantes. All are competing for space in newscasts and newspapers, and of course for our attention.

The most glorious piece of news for me though is something everyone thought was impossible for the past two years or so. Impossible because the previous administration officially abandoned the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court, and the new administration has even said it won’t ever cooperate.

But this week, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra, the government’s chief legal defender, said something that has quietly but powerfully brought some chills from Pasay to Davao, and also lots of hope for tens of thousands of families who seek justice for loved ones who were killed.

Guevarra said that while the Marcos government won’t cooperate, neither would it stop the ICC prosecutor in his investigation by any means.
Guevarra of course was referring to the pre-trial and prosecutorial investigation stage of the ICC case against Rodrigo Duterte and his cohorts who allegedly masterminded and conducted the most brutal drug war of recent memory.

Exactly when the administration made this decision and laid down this distinction, we still do not know. But Guevarra’s pronouncement is a very public and open signal to law enforcement at the airports and across the country not to bar the ICC prosecutor and his team from entering the country, or to stop them from doing what they have to do.

We also do not know whether this change happened before or after Vice President Sara Duterte’s replacement as education secretary, or whether the “prayer rallies” actually aimed to persuade the president not to make such a change.

I’m quite sure that this development is watched by legal experts and the public interest and human rights lawyers assisting the families of victims of extrajudicial killings, by international organizations and agencies such as the Interpol, and the diplomatic missions in the country.

One of the former police chiefs under Duterte has said that he is prepared to face the ICC, and maintained that they followed the law, and not Duterte’s very public orders for the execution of drug suspects. That is well and good for the general to claim. He is after all entitled to his own defense.
But of course, that’s not the only thing Duterte loudly said in his six years as president, and about the police and the drug war. He also made a lot of statements assuring the police he will support and back them up legally and judicially as they implement the drug war.

If the Marcos administration belatedly opens or reopens investigations into each drug war-related death that was not investigated as required by law, it will immediately serve multiple purposes. That will boldly start the procedures under the criminal justice system of the Philippines which the previous administration publicly prefers. But each investigation can most probably strengthen the ICC case in The Hague. The delay in the investigation can only be logically blamed on the defendants in the ICC whose incompetence, abuse of power, or formal departure from the ICC arguably guaranteed that justice won’t be meted from 2016 to 2022.

The strong stance defending Philippine sovereignty and territory, the ban on POGOs, and now the non-interference into the ICC investigation represent a drastic break from the previous administration. If some regret the collapse of the 2022 Marcos-Duterte Uniteam or wish that they still stick together, I believe these developments should end those regrets and make us encourage a complete and total political divorce. This is one breakup we all should support.

Politics or the quest for power is almost certainly what’s behind this development. They may have other motives, but that’s not as important to what has been handed to victims.

Power made this happen, and because it is good for the public, we must support it. This makes it possible for each family who lost a family member to the death squads to obtain justice, and making the death squads and their masterminds within the reach of both Philippine law and the ICC which they once thought would never be allowed to touch them.

What we can do now is to support the victims’ families, their groups such as Rise Up, and the complainants in the ICC, and the lawyers assisting them like the National Union of Peoples Lawyers. When they win, we win too.