Pimentel urges Marcos to rejoin ICC

MANILA, Philippines — Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel III has urged President Marcos to rejoin the International Criminal Court (ICC) following congressional investigations on alleged state-sanctioned killings during the previous administration.

Pimentel made the call to the Chief Executive in his speech during a foreign policy address at the Department of Foreign Affairs on Friday.

“Let us rejoin the ICC. We should treat this as our ‘insurance policy’ just in case ‘our system’ fails us and we get to elect an abusive, tyrannical, heartless leader and our justice system fails us too,” Pimentel said in his speech.

The Philippines withdrew from the ICC after it launched an investigation into former president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs. Duterte unilaterally withdrew from the Rome Statute that created the ICC without seeking concurrence from the Senate.

In an interview with radio dwIZ yesterday, Pimentel said Duterte has the power as president to unilaterally withdraw from the ICC. But rejoining the Rome Statute would require both the President’s ratification and the Senate’s concurrence.

Rejoining the ICC does not have anything to do with the present crimes against humanity case already underway against Duterte and former police chief Sen. Ronald Dela Rosa for the thousands of drug suspects’ deaths, according to Pimentel.

It only meant having a “secondary” justice system for victims of state-sanctioned killings and genocide moving forward, based on the results of the Pimentel-led Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee hearing and the House of Representatives quad committee inquiry on extrajudicial killings during Duterte’s drug war.

Duterte admitted before the Senate that a death squad exists in Davao that targets suspected criminals, but he denied rewarding police officers with cash for every kill when he was president.

President Marcos maintained that the Philippines is not rejoining the Rome Statute, as he called the ICC investigation into Duterte’s drug war an infringement of the country’s sovereignty and its own working justice system. However, no case has so far been filed in Philippine courts against the former president for his drug war.