Vice President Sara Duterte on Sunday criticized the International Criminal Court in a speech at the “Free Duterte Now” rally in Melbourne, Australia.
Duterte said her presence at the event was not to support any interim release of former President Rodrigo Duterte, but to express protest against the ICC case involving her father.
She urged Filipinos in Melbourne to persuade the Australian government and other foreign leaders to look into the alleged injustices against the former president, who is currently detained in the Netherlands over charges of crimes against humanity before the ICC.
In her nearly two-hour-long speech at the Melbourne rally, the Vice President discussed why the ICC no longer had jurisdiction over her father’s case, and why Philippine authorities supposedly breached legal procedures when they failed to present her father to a local court before turning him over to the ICC.
“You convince the government of Australia — because Australia is a member of the ICC — to look into the case of President Duterte and the injustice that he is receiving, that he has been getting from the ICC,” she said.
“You talk to the government of Australia. Come together, sit down, come up with a position paper,” she added.
Duterte also urged her supporters to bring his father’s case to the local Australian media, to the global community through their social media accounts.
The Vice President Duterte proceeded to lambaste the ICC, saying that there has been “some sort of discrimination” in the arrests and trials conducted by the Hague-based tribunal.
She claimed that the ICC can only lodge cases against the vulnerable nationalities such as the Afircans, but never against the Westerners.
Duterte also reiterated her allegations that the arrest of her father was politically motivated, saying the police operation to take him to the Netherlands happened just as he was starting to campaign for an opposition senatorial slate for the 2025 midterm elections.
The Vice President also accused the Marcos administration of presenting economic figures that “look good on paper but are meaningless in the real world.”
She cited the national budget as lacking transparency, and that government debt continues to grow without visible results.
“Debt that we don’t see where it’s going, a budget that no one knows how it’s being spent, ending up in politicized aid programs,” she commented.
Duterte lamented the lack of attention given to farmers, and accused the government of neglecting food security, emphasizing that halfway into the administration’s term, no concrete plans have been made or implemented.