“Senadora Imee’s foreign relations committee hearing last Thursday opened up more questions on the controversial surrender to the ICC of fPRRD”
“Interesting times” is how friends both here and abroad, describe what is happening in the country these days.
Combined with the “trumpisms” of America’s POTUS and other worrisome global developments, interesting is actually troubling for the Philippines.
My Thursday, March 20 article in this space was inadvertently short and incomplete. My bad.
I failed to check what I sent to our opinion editor, which was an early draft , a first page which was yet to be completed. In any case, “War,” the political kind, is upon us.
For both the Marcos and Duterte camps, reconciliation is no longer possible, especially after the former president was shanghaied in the dead of night to Den Haag, and into the waiting arms of the ICC.
“Existential” is how pundits describe the “war,” which means the House of Duterte is fighting for its life, not in the Davao setting which it will yet control in the forthcoming elections, but upon the national scene.
And the president as head of the House of Marcos is facing its most serious challenge, with protests expected to escalate, with given timelines like the ailing patriarch’s 80th birthday this Friday, the May 12 elections, and the June 2 resumption of Congress, which is when VP Sara’s trial in the Senate starts.
At the end of that shortened Thursday article, I rued that this political war does not benefit ordinary folks, what with economic headwinds threatening us. But those headwinds are for another article to discuss.
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On the same day that a Senate foreign relations committee chaired by the president’s sister was probing into the surrender caper at Villamor Air Base, news filtered in from tiny Timor Leste where its Court of Appeals denied our country’s request for the extradition of Arnie Teves, the Negros Oriental congressman wanted here for the grisly murder of political nemesis Gov. Roel Degamo.
Teves was the object of an Interpol red notice, and our DOJ requested his extradition based on valid court warrants here and recognized by the Interpol.
The contrast between how a poorer and smaller nation in our region gave a wanted Filipino much leeway by way of its justice system as against how our own sovereign country has treated another, a former president at that, adds fuel to the fire of public sentiment.
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Last Friday, the Iglesia ni Cristo weighed in on the troubling situation. Juxtaposed against this is a much-touted SWS February survey where a majority of 51 percent agree that the former president should be held accountable for the casualties in his war on drugs, with just 25 percent disagreeing with the research question.
But the survey does not square off with the most recent development, where Duterte is to be tried in an international court based in a foreign country.
That is what many Filipinos disagree with. Accountability is alright, but it should be in our country, and that too is what the INC in its official statement demands.
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Still, their first Asian trophy is already in their hands, and the ICC, snubbed by powerful nations including the US of A, China, Russia, India, Israel and others, is not likely to send fPRRD back home.
Even his daughter Sara who is assembling a legal defense team in The Netherlands has publicly expressed doubt that her ailing father would be repatriated soon.
Will the current uproar be sustained, and if so, for how long?
What impact will the troubling development have on the May 12 senatorial elections, where at stake is the numbers game on the impeachment trial of the beleaguered vice-president?
The Alyansa ticket prevails in current trends while the PDP line-up is replete with relatively unknown candidates.
With the patriarch in a cold prison cell in Scheveningen, will Inday Sara step up to the plate in the campaign which is almost half through? The outcome is also “existential” for her political longevity.
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Senadora Imee’s foreign relations committee hearing last Thursday opened up more questions on the controversial surrender to the ICC of fPRRD.
For the first time, the public learned about a “diffusion” request from Interpol as against what everyone thought to be a “red notice” of a request to assist in the arrest.
I suspect that even justices of the Supreme Court where habeas corpus petitions are pending, were surprised at the revelations in that committee hearing.
For while it is generally accepted that howsoever the tribunal acts on the petitions now that the object is already under ICC control, what it would say about the manner by which government surrendered its citizen would be much awaited.
The times ahead are interesting indeed, but no matter how and where a deeply divided nation stands, these times trouble much.