By Diego Morra
Mooted. That’s the legal term that applies to the wasted petitions filed by the camp of unlamented ex-president Rodrigo Duterte to prevent his transport to The Netherlands, where he will be incarcerated at the luxurious cells of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the first former leader of an Asian nation to be charged with crimes against humanity.
The Supreme Court declined to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the petition filed by former President Rodrigo Duterte and Senator Ronald de la Rosa at 4:27 p.m. on Mar. 11, 2025 to stop the transport of Duterte to The Hague after he was served an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) at 9:02 a.m. on the same day. The court also junked a 94-page plea for the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) for failing to convince the court that Duterte had the right to TRO. The SC cannot rule on an issue that has become irrelevant as Duterte has flown the coop, only to be billeted in another coop.
The following day, Duterte children Sebastian Zimmermann Duterte and Veronica Avancena Duterte filed separate petitions for the grant of a writ of habeas corpus to compel Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin to produce Duterte, who was already in The Hague and being processed for detention by the ICC. These actions are strange since the Duterte patriarch practically insulted the ICC to come and get him as he spoke before the quad panel at the House of Representatives last year. Yet, it appeared that Duterte panicked and failed to understand that the ICC was going to oblige him. The ICC warrant was issued on Mar. 7, 2025, in time for Duterte’s rambling, stream-of-consciousness speech before the choir in Hong Kong. The subject had been mooted by the failure to prevent Duterte’s transport. Duterte cannot be presented physically; a hologram is not good enough. Teleportation is still a long time coming.
Lawyers may argue to kingdom come about the unconstitutionality of the Duterte arrest on account of an enabling law covering ICC arrests and that the warrant could no longer be respected following the country’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute that became effective on Mar. 17, 2019. These procedural technicalities in the face of the determination by the ICC itself that the court, established by treaty and ratified by many countries, save for imperialists like the US, Russia, China and others of the same bent, retained jurisdiction over suspects in state parties to the Rome Statute.
By withdrawing from the statute, the crimes of Duterte and his indispensable cohorts did not wither away and the justiciable issues did not evaporate. “Scientia potestas est,” wrote Thomas Hobbes, and the gross inexcusable neglect of the legal eagles surrounding Duterte who did not do their homework, including the missing Herminio “Harry” Roque, who could technically represent Duterte as he is accredited to the ICC, is the reason why Duterte now is behind bars in the chilly 24 hours within Scheveningen prison, which also hosts the Penitentiary Psychiatric Center, judicial medical center and the limited secured facility. It is said that ghosts haunt the prison where those accused of crimes against humanity are detained. There are at least 6,000 of them there and they would surely give Duterte a grand welcome.
Duterte will be the sixth inmate at the United Nations Detention Unit (UNDU) for international offenders like the suspects of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and of the ICC. Duterte will be the first Asian guest at the UNDU facility, joining elite offenders like the hopelessly dead Slobodan Milosevic, the ailing Radovan Karadzic and the former Serbian army chief Ratko Mladic. Former Yugoslav president Milosevic died on Mar. 11, 2006 of a heart attack in his prison cell after refusing to take medicines from prison doctors and before he could be convicted. Interestingly, Duterte was arrested exactly on Milosevic’s 19th death anniversary. He may yet be assigned the same cell that became Milosevic’s bed and hearse. Karadzic, a doctor, was arrested only in 2008 and convicted of the Srebrenica genocide, in which 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred. He was given a life sentence in 2016 and shipped to UK in 2021 to be clapped in a British prison. Mladic, the head of the Bosnian Serb Army that perpetrated the massacre, pleaded to be imprisoned in Serbia but the UN said “no dice,” despite suffering two strokes and a heart attack while in Scheveningen. He also had colon surgery in 2020.
The SC actually acted properly and compelled Marcos Jr. government to respond to the Duterte and de la Rosa petition within 10 days. Executive Secretary Bersamin was likewise ordered by the High Tribunal to respond to the habeas corpus case. Former SC justices said the petitions came a tad late as Duterte flew to The Hague on the night of Mar. 11, and the High Tribunal can no longer acquire jurisdiction over Duterte. If the Duterte really had an inkling that the ICC would move against him, he should have asked the SC to prevent an “illegal” and “unconstitutional” act by the ICC, or mobilized his forces to protect him in his Davao City lairs. Yet, he did not and off to Hong Kong he did, fueling more nasty talk that he was arranging for China to save him, or that he was emptying his accounts in the nominally free port. Xi Jinping did not condemn his arrest but merely said his case should not be politicized.
It is bad politics to kill 30,000 people who had never been convicted on drug charges, with the police and Duterte Death Squad (DDS) as judge, jury and executioner. Due process was left to hang dry. “La loi c’est moi” (The law is me) was the rule during the bloody Duterte years. Now, he is howling that he is being denied justice, the precious commodity he had denied his victims. Duterte’s bluster has been sundered, his strongman facade destroyed by the likes of Maj. Gen. Nicolas Torre, who read him his Miranda Rights while he sat meekly. His factotums were denied the chance to be with their boss. Government kept him in Villamor precisely to ensure that he will be flown out of the country in less than 24 hours. Duterte lost the skirmish, and the damage will be fatal to the Duterte dynasty. Denied of their “entitlement” to suckle the teats of public money, and the Office of the Vice President (OVP) stripped of billions, even the Chinese would naturally turn the financial spigot off. The government’s delivery of Duterte to ICC should hasten Sara’s impeachment trial. It will be culmination of a dynastic destruction by a rival dynasty. #
