‘FROM NO TO MAYBE’, PBBM NOW SAYS PH REJOINING ICC UNDER STUDY

By Junex Doronio

MANILA — With the filing of resolutions at the House of Representatives calling for the government to cooperate with the International Criminal Courts’s investigation on the “bloody drug war” during the previous Rodrigo Roa Duterte administration that human rights groups claim to have killed 30,000 people, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on Friday said the Philippines was studying a possible return to the ICC.

It can be recalled that on 21 July 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the government remains obliged to cooperate in criminal proceedings of the International Criminal Court even if it has withdrawn from the Rome Statute – the treaty that formed the ICC.

“Should we return under the fold of the ICC? So that is again under study. So we’ll just keep looking at it and see what our options are,” the President told reporters.

He added that the resolutions at the House of Representatives were “not unusual.”

The lower chamber is under the leadership of his cousin Speaker Ferdinand Martin G Romualdez who was recently “snubbed” by Vice President Sara Duterte who claimed she did not notice the Speaker when she met the Philippine delegation at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City.

Speaker Romualdez stands around six feet tall and is hard not to notice his commanding presence.

“They (lawmakers) are just expressing or manifesting the sense of the House that perhaps it is time to allow or to cooperate with the ICC investigations,” Marcos said.

On Tuesday, November 20, pro-administration National Unity Party (NUP) Manila Rep. Bienvenido “Benny” Abante Jr. filed a resolution urging the Marcos Jr. administration to coordinate with the ICC probe.

Last October, a similar resolution was filed by Makabayan bloc lawmakers France Castro of the ACT Teachers Party-list, Arlene Brosas of the Gabriela Party-list, and Raoul Manuel of the Kabataan Party-list.

The Philippines under the Duterte administration pulled out of the ICC in 2019, some three years before the drug war inquiry was resumed.

“If you are talking about the jurisdiction of the ICC, especially since we have withdrawn from the Rome Statute a few years back, that brings into question whether or not this is actually possible,” Marcos Jr. said.

(ai/mnm)