Analysis and Opinion

By Dean de la Paz

From the time that our first dictatorship was spawned, first in the guise of a two-term presidency, and later when statutory terms ended, all pretensions vanished and martial law was declared to perpetuate both power and plunder, it had taken us more than twenty years to shed its shroud. 

Today, 35 years hence, justice has not yet been served and what democracy we won back has all but disappeared. Resurrected demons do not only haunt, they possess, not simply to again curse us in hell but to reduce us into a vassal state. Plunder, state criminality and terror, corruption and economic blight are back. This time in the hands not simply of a despot, but one without vision nor even basic decency. 

Our rights of suffrage no longer offer hope given the barren landscape depleted of potent leadership alternatives. The International Criminal Court (ICC) however gives as a glimmer however distant.

Never mind Rodrigo Duterte's combinations and permutations of escape routes to flee from justice and accountability. When his term ends, he loses all immunities and comes under the justice system, the failure of which highlights the ICC as a critical recourse. 

While he might temporarily descend to the vice presidency and hold out in a virtual panic room, the constitutional immunity from suit is not applicable. Those are reserved only for the president. The Department of Justice has declared vice presidents can be sued. Unless he deliberately distorts the intent of the Constitution.

Here is where the aspect of a justice system that not only functions but is willing to prosecute crimes against humanity enters the equation through the ICC. Analyze recent ICC developments as they relate to Duterte's gambitto derail the justice sought by the people. 

Recently the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC received a 57-page request for a full investigation of possible crimes against humanity. Covering from 2011 to March 2019, it includes recorded public declarations and confessionscomplete with citations and footnotes from various sources.

Notable are recorded admonitions, orders, dictates and directives delivered publicly prior to and during his incumbency. Empowered with presidential authority, these include directives like, "Go ahead and kill them",reinforced with "Don't take this as a joke" as well as "my only sin is the extrajudicial killings."

Especially when constantly repeated and reinforced, the Rules of Court and 1997 jurisprudence declare voluntary public confessions, when corroborated by the commission of a crime, as admissible evidence. Arrayed against an individual soon to lose personal presidential immunities and an election squarely within the ICC investigation period, we have a chance to forestall a second dictatorship.

Former ICC Justice Raul Pangalangan has said that there are no impediments to the ICC initiative despite our current non-membership. 

"Impunity leaves a gap in our moral universe where persons can commit horrendous crimes and still move about casually, unchastised, and unpunished, as if they owed no debt to their victims and the world. ICC closes that gap."

In 2022, let us close that gap.

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Dean de la Paz is a former investment banker. He is the Chairman of the Board of a renewable energy company and is a retired Business Policy, Finance and Mathematics professor. 

Photograph is the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands, from Encyclopedia Britannica.