ICC threat

It looks like the power play is still at play. After the House of Representatives stripped Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio of the millions in confidential funds she was lobbying for, which triggered not only tons of speculation and a fountain of gossip, but a father-daughter reunion of sorts, some congresspersons are pricking a couple of thorns into her side.

The latest move(s) are the resolutions filed in Congress seeking cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on its investigation into the thousands of extra-judicial killings during the Duterte (pere) presidency. To recall, President Duterte swiftly opted out of the Rome Statute, the treaty which made us a party to the extra-territorial jurisdiction of the ICC, as soon as the ICC started sniffing around the corpses. The next occupant of the position sent a signal it would honor his predecessor by continuing to refuse to recognize ICC jurisdiction.

That should have laid the matter to bed, or perhaps, made it easier for the former president to sleep at night, except he suddenly woke up and began barking. The father was not happy with the loss of Confidential and Intelligence Funds. In typical strongman fashion, he named Rep. France Castro as a communist, named her as a target for the intelligence fund, and threatened to kill her. How’s that for a protective father?

Enter the ICC specter.

Rep. Edcel Lagman, the Makabayan bloc, and a couple more congressmen not identified with the noisy minority filed separate resolutions calling for ICC cooperation. Now what on earth could have moved these discrete particles within the House chamber to wiggle their way into adopting the same positions at the same time? What’s with the cooperation mantra?

Rep. France Castro’s positioning is natural, given the threats against her life. As she says, “with…Duterte’s televised admission of ordering extrajudicial killings and financing them with his confidential and intelligence funds, it is imperative that we allow the ICC to investigate his crimes.” But what about the motivations of the other congressmen? What’s behind their sudden noise?

The slew of resolutions has stirred the daughter Duterte to respond in the clearest way possible. “Like what we have been saying from the beginning, we will not cooperate with them in any way, shape or form.” Rappler notes she had been very mum whenever she was asked to comment on the ICC case against her father. Until now.

What an effective threat this then appears to be, indeed. The message to the father and daughter tandem seems to be: “Keep quiet over there, or we will sic the ICC hounds on you.”

That might mean we shouldn’t get our hopes up that the congressional resolutions will find any traction, and that the ICC will suddenly be granted carte blanche to collect more evidence. That is, if the daughter minds the threat and stops the public airing of grievances, and if the father stops publicly railing at the current powers-that-be (and uttering death threats).

Otherwise, father and daughter might wake up one fine morning to find out that those resolutions have suddenly found themselves in final form and being given the stamp of approval. And who knows (since we’re dreaming), our Senate might suddenly find itself re-ratifying the treaty for the ICC, and our secretary of Foreign Affairs might find himself depositing our terms of accession at the United Nations.

Since daughter Duterte has seen fit to rail at the supposed “unconstitutionality” of cooperating with the ICC and how it manifests interference with our sovereignty, the lawmakers might just see fit to respond to that critique by employing the most legal of ways --Senate ratification. Never mind that, in the vice president’s view, the ICC’s presence “effectively belittles and degrades our legal institutions.”

I think at that point she forgot that the Supreme Court, the most legal of legal institutions, had ruled in 2021 that the Philippines cannot escape from its obligations (and liabilities!) already incurred while it was still a member, and therefore, still has to cooperate with the ICC. The Supreme Court certainly didn’t feel belittled or degraded when it ruled this way --it even gave its own imprimatur to the cooperation portion.

Will we lay out the red carpet for the ICC crimes-against-humanity-busters soon? Well, we did see former senator Leila de Lima, the prima donna of thorns in Duterte’s side, freed after years of incarceration. Anything is possible.