MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte does not have the exclusive prerogative to withdraw the country’s ratification of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court, senators-petitioners argued Tuesday.
The minority senators, through their legal counsel Barry Gutierrez, said that Duterte committed grave abuse of discretion when he unilaterally withdrew from the ICC last March during the resumption of the oral arguments on the country’s exit from the international court.
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They insisted that the withdrawal from the international tribunal must be invalidated as the upper house did not concur through a two-thirds vote.
“Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the president has the sole exclusive authority to withdraw the Philippines from a treaty, much less withdraw unilaterally therefrom without Senate concurrence,” Gutierrez.
He added: “It cannot be automatically implied that just because treaty withdrawal involves foreign relations, it is solely an executive prerogative.”
Section 21, Article VII of the 1987 Constitution states that no treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred with by at least two-thirds of all the members of the Senate.
The present charter, however, is silent on the upper chamber’s part in the withdrawal of a treaty.
Despite this, Gutierrez said that the power to terminate treaties must also be a shared power of the president and the Senate since the treaty-making power is shared by the two branches of government.
“To conclude that it is a joint power, one just need to look at Section 21 of Article VII and, from the explicit intent to make treaty making a shared power, infer on the basis of the ‘necessary and proper’ doctrine of implied powers that the power to unmake treaties is likewise joint as well,” he said.
Malacañang earlier said that Senate nod is not needed in the country’s withdrawal from ICC because Duterte is the “chief architect of foreign policy.”
The minority lawmakers who challenged the exit from the Hague-based court were Sens. Francis Pangilinan, Franklin Drilon, Paolo Benigno Aquino IV, Risa Hontiveros, Antonio Trillanes IV and Leila De Lima.