“Bow your heads in shame — judges and justices of this benighted land”
Many sins have been attributed to the president’s father, some real, some untrue.
This writer was active in the political opposition against the former president, as deputy secretary general of the UNIDO. It was Ninoy Aquino who in 1981 asked me in Boston to help his bosom friend Doy Laurel in organizing the coalition of political parties and personalities to fight the Marcos regime.
Cory Aquino appointed me postmaster-general of the Bureau of Posts, and one of the first things I did within my authority was to confiscate and ban postcards being peddled in Makati’s Ayala Avenue depicting the former president and first lady as blood-sucking “vampires.”
Someone from the palace (not Pres. Cory) asked me why I banned such postcards from the mail. The mood of the time was to demonize the Marcoses.
I publicly stated “these postcards are being bought by foreigners and mailed to different parts of the world. Whatever we may think and feel about the previous regime, Marcos and Imelda are Filipinos, and I cannot be a party to disgracing them to the whole world, as it was in my power as head of the postal system to ban “pornographic and libelous” materials in the mails.
Looking back to those historic days from the snap elections to the series of events that led to the ouster and exile of Marcos Sr. and his family, a sense of déjà vu came upon me as I watched the footages of the manner by which Rodrigo Roa Duterte was abducted by assignees of his son and flown posthaste into the waiting arms of the ICC.
Up to the moment he was shipped out in a Gulfstream jet previously owned by PAL tycoon Lucio Tan, with present ownership still kept secret, the same plane Isabelinos saw at the Cauayan airport when the president flew to inspect the broken bridge that connects the province to neighboring Kalinga, Duterte placed his trust in the “law.”
Duterte, in returning to the country from a speaking engagement in Hong Kong, thought the government would bring him to a judge, following the processes written in the ICC’s Article 59 which required he be brought before the custodial state’s judicial authority.
Both Fadullon and Herr General Torre are part of the executive branch.
The victims of the war on drugs have every right to complain in our courts for what they accuse our police did during the drug war.
Instead they were inveigled by Duterte detractors to bring their accusations to the ICC, because under our Constitution, a sitting president could not be charged while in office.
But Duterte is now functus oficio, with his successor and the inquisitors of the HoR hounding him and his family over the last several months. Why then have they not charged him in a Philippine court, with all the “evidence” they claim to have?
Why did the DOJ dribble their prosecution, if not because they were all waiting for the ICC to do the “dirty job” for this government?
Nikkei Asia’s editor-in-chief, Shin Nakayama rightly commented that “It is highly unusual for a former president to be arrested at the request of the ICC. This case is even more unprecedented because the Philippines is no longer an ICC member and is not obligated to arrest or extradite him under the court’s warrant.”
The government’s claim they were complying with an Interpol request simply does not wash. It was clumsy subterfuge intended to mask the fact that Marcos Junior kept saying that he would not cooperate with the ICC.
“Palusot” in Tagalog.
But as seen last Friday, all domestic ministrations are for naught, as the ICC already had its grand trophy, after failing to arrest Putin, Netanyahu and others who have simply ignored it. They will not let go of their prize catch, courtesy of a government that values neither sovereignty nor nationalism.
Would Ferdinand Marcos Sr. have surrendered our sovereignty to a foreign tribunal?
Even the Rome Statute recognizes that the custodial State has primary jurisdiction over crimes committed within its territory, under the principle of complementarity.
Whether you love or hate Rodrigo Duterte, he deserved trial in a Philippine court of law.
After all he swore repeatedly that he and he alone would answer for whatever the police did during his drug war.
Ironically, the police was the same force that followed the unjust orders of the president and the quisling of an adviser who Duterte himself once trusted.
No, Marcos Senior, faced with the situation of an accused Filipino, a former president at that, would not have surrendered his political enemy to a foreign court. He would have had the charges filed here.
Now the whole world is lumping us together with failed states without a functioning justice system. Bow your heads in shame — judges and justices of this benighted land.