Why is the Duterte administration afraid of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

Vice President Leni Robredo on Wednesday posed this question as she maintained that the withdrawal of the Philippines from the Rome Statute, the international treaty which created the ICC, does not rest solely on President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision as Malacañang had insisted.

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Robredo, a lawyer, pointed out that the country’s membership in the ICC was not decided by the President alone “so it’s also not his sole discretion to withdraw” from the international tribunal.

“Our membership in the ICC is not the sole discretion of the President,” Robredo told reporters after defending her office’s P549 million proposed budget for 2019 at the House of Representatives.

“Anyway, why are we afraid to belong to (the ICC)? Isn’t it an assurance that as we try to put an end to human rights violations, several countries will be cooperating with us?” she added. “That’s the real reason why we joined that group.”

Opposition senators had challenged before the Supreme Court Mr. Duterte’s order for the Philippines to leave the ICC without the congressional concurrence, claiming it was an arrogation of the legislative body’s authority.

The President arbitrarily pulled the country out of the ICC after the international tribunal’s chief, Fatou Bensouda, disclosed that they were conducting a preliminary examination on the complaint filed against Mr. Duterte by lawyer Jude Sabio.

On Tuesday, relatives of supposed victims of the President’s brutal war on drugs brought a similar complaint against him. /kga

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