The Filipino Conscience and desire for Justice versus Relentless Impunity:
Thoughts after the pre-Trial at The Hague
The pre-trial proceedings at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against former President Rodrigo Duterte have placed the Philippines under an unforgiving international spotlight. Allegations of crimes against humanity—spanning from 2013 to 2018, covering murders and attempted murders during his tenure as Davao City mayor and as President—are now being scrutinized by the impartial eyes of the world. For Manila, for its citizens, and for global observers, this is more than a legal inquiry; it is a moral reckoning, a judgment on the very soul of governance in the Duterte era.
ICC Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang laid out the prosecution’s case in stark terms. Duterte, prosecutors allege, was not merely a distant overseer but “at the very heart of the common plan to neutralize alleged criminals in the Philippines, including through murders.” He allegedly identified targets, provided moral and financial support, and facilitated the flow of weapons and logistical aid to those who carried out the killings. Victims, many of them ordinary citizens, were summarily executed in operations marked by brutality and impunity.
“Unlike Mr. Duterte, who is represented by his counsel here today, they were deprived of any form of due process. The loss of every single one of these victims had the most profound impact on their families, their friends, and ultimately their communities,” Niang said.
Representing these victims, lawyer Joel Butuyan spoke of profound disappointment and lingering fear. Duterte’s absence from the proceedings, Butuyan argued, is more than a procedural detail: it is a symbol of the persistent climate of terror that characterized his administration.
“We communicate the very deep disappointment of the victims at the decision allowing Rodrigo Duterte not to be present in this stage of confirmation of charges,” Butuyan said. “In fact, if Mr. Duterte could threaten to slap the judges of this Court [the ICC], imagine the kind of terror-filled threats and violent actions that can easily be used against the victims if the suspect walks free from this Court.”
On the other hand, the defense team, led by lawyer Nicholas Kaufman, has sought to reframe Duterte’s rhetoric as non-lethal—a calculated tool to instill fear and obedience, not to commit murder. They argue the speeches targeted only those “poisoning society” through drugs, not individuals, and were part of a broader campaign to assert authority.
Yet this argument illuminates the central moral and political crisis of the Duterte era. When fear is wielded as a substitute for law, when obedience is enforced through terror, justice is hollow. The Duterte administration displayed a clear pattern: ordinary citizens faced the knife of extrajudicial killings, while high-profile perpetrators, political allies, and “big fishes” implicated in the drug trade largely remained untouched. Law was no longer a shield for all; it became a weapon to enforce compliance. Euphemisms—“deterrence to crime,” “collateral damage,” “shit happens”—masked acts of state violence, reducing legality to rhetoric and morality to convenience.
Even in the ICC courtroom, the echoes of the Duterte-style rhetoric persist. Kaufman’s opening statement, observers note, eulogized Duterte while casting victims and human rights defenders as adversaries, mirroring the president’s familiar posture. The defense offered neither substantive rebuttal to the allegations nor acknowledgment of the human toll. As one would likely to remarked, “Now we know why Duterte tried to derail the confirmation hearing. He has no credible defense. Kaufman eulogized Duterte, demonized the victims and human rights organizations, and did everything except present a credible defense. At this rate, Duterte’s fate before the Court seems inevitable.”
Yet, if this writer may venture a controversial observation, one might argue that former PNP Chief Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa’s infamous declaration—“Shit happens”—rings with a grim honesty that Kaufman’s legal gymnastics can never achieve. Why so? Because Dela Rosa, in his blunt, unsparing way, acknowledged the undeniable reality of Duterte’s war on drugs. Operations Tokhang and Double Barrel did not exist in rhetoric alone—they left bodies, scars, and lives in their wake. There were killings, arrests, and punishments meted out, however selective, however brutal.
The starkness of Dela Rosa’s phrase—coarse, shocking, unvarnished—spoke truth in a way that Kaufman’s defense, with its flowery claims of “fear without intent” and moralized rhetoric, cannot. The operations themselves testified to the reality of Duterte’s campaign: thousands of deaths, many innocent, many guilty in ways only the state determined. The consequences were real, immediate, and devastating. Words could no longer obscure the facts.
In contrast, Kaufman’s opening statement before the ICC sounded more like a paean than a defense—eloquent, polished, and yet strangely untethered from the brutal reality on the ground. It praised Duterte, demonized victims, and attacked human rights organizations, but it said nothing about the bodies that lay in the streets, the families shattered, the ordinary citizens terrorized. It was legal theater without moral substance, a defense in theory but not in truth.
Dela Rosa’s blunt admission, repulsive though it may seem to many, at least recognized that actions have consequences. The killings, the terror, the fear—these were real, and they demanded acknowledgment, if not justification. Kaufman’s rhetoric, by contrast, sought to paper over that reality, to deny the plain evidence before the eyes of the world.
In the end, the honesty of a coarse phrase may reveal more about governance, accountability, and moral responsibility than all the eloquence of a courtroom speech delivered thousands of miles from the victims themselves. It is a bitter lesson: the truth of deeds cannot be erased by the polish of words, however carefully arranged.
Back to the topic, this ICC proceedings serve a dual purpose. Legally, they will determine whether charges of crimes against humanity proceed to trial. Politically and morally, they expose the fragility of a system where legality is subordinated to fear, spectacle, and personal power. They remind the world—and the Philippines—that justice cannot be selective, that the rule of law cannot coexist with a climate of terror, and that the moral authority of governance rests on protecting, not terrorizing, the citizenry.
For Manila, the case lays bare a central question: can a nation uphold the rule of law when law is treated as optional, when fear becomes the primary instrument of governance? The answer is emerging not in Malacañang, not in political rallies or speeches, but in a courtroom far from the Philippines, where Duterte’s legacy is being measured not by votes, applause, or bluster, but by the cold, unyielding logic of international justice.
The ICC is more than a legal theater; it is a mirror to the Philippines, reflecting a painful truth: governance that relies on fear and spectacle leaves a nation morally bankrupt, and accountability, no matter how delayed, is the only path to restoring faith in justice.
