Senator heading ‘drug war’ probe urges Marcos: Let PH rejoin ICC

Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III —Senate PRIB

MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos should reconsider his decision upholding his predecessor’s order to withdraw the Philippines from the International Criminal Court (ICC) amid cries for justice by the victims of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s ruthless war on drugs, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said on Saturday.

Marcos and Pimentel were among the 17 senators who voted on Aug. 24, 2011, to ratify the Rome Statute, the treaty which the Philippines helped to draft in 1998 to establish the ICC.

Backpedaling on his previous support for the country’s withdrawal from the Statute, Pimentel said rejoining the tribunal based in The Hague would be an “insurance policy” for Filipinos should a dictator take the helm of Malacañang.

READ: No better time to work with ICC

As the Senate president then, Pimentel backed Duterte’s move to bolt from the treaty in March 2018 and argued that the chamber’s concurrence was not needed in affirming the President’s decision.

Change of heart

The withdrawal became official a year later. The ICC, however, retains jurisdiction over alleged crimes in the Philippines while it was a state party to the treaty, from Nov. 1, 2011, up to and including March 16, 2019.

Pimentel said that hearing the testimonies of the relatives of some of the drug war victims during the recent congressional inquiries led him to have a change of heart.

Pimentel, a lawyer, has been tapped to lead the Senate investigation of Duterte’s take-no-prisoners strategy against illegal drugs and criminality, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of mostly poor suspected offenders.

‘Insurance policy’

“Let’s rejoin the ICC because I saw that many are still calling for justice,” Pimentel told the “Usapang Senado” program over radio dwIZ.

“Even if the executive branch is saying that they are investigating these cases, those who lost their loved ones are not happy just because there’s an investigation. They want to know what really happened to their relatives,” he said.

Returning to the Rome Statute’s judicial mantle would give the Philippines a “second justice system,” the senator added.

“I call it an ‘insurance policy,’” Pimentel said. “It’s an insurance policy just in case we will have a leader who is ruthless, without conscience and a killer.”

Message to envoys

The opposition senator made the same call when he spoke before members of the diplomatic community during an event hosted by the Department of Foreign Affairs on Friday night.

In his speech, Pimentel said the separate hearings being conducted by the Senate and the House quad committee were an eye-opener for the government and the public.

“We’ve seen that in the worst-case scenario where our systems fail, such as when our democratic system elects a killer as a leader, one without conscience or compassion, and our justice system is slow to respond,” he said. “In those events, it’s best to have an ‘insurance policy.’”

But Pimentel conceded that leaving the ICC was easier than reviving the country’s membership in the international tribunal.

While the withdrawal from the Rome Statute was just an executive decision, he said the concurrence of at least two-thirds of the Senate was needed to ratify an international treaty as mandated by the 1987 Constitution.

According to Pimentel, the President would have to move first and then ask for the Senate’s ratification to rejoin the ICC.

Positive action

“Joining a treaty will be more difficult. A positive presidential action is needed,” he said.

Reminded of his previous stance, Pimentel said: “It would have been better for us not to leave [the ICC].”

Duterte ordered the country’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute after then ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that she would start a preliminary examination of the complaints against him.

Three years later, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that Duterte could not arbitrarily terminate international agreements without the concurrence of the Senate.

The court ruled on the petitions separately filed by opposition senators led by then Sen. Francis Pangilinan and two other groups. —with a report from Inquirer Research