CARTOON BY: AARON PAUL C. CARIL
EDITORIAL
When justice crosses borders—and politics follows
The International Criminal Court’s trial of former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte forces the country to confront a question it has long avoided. For the families of those allegedly killed in the drug war, justice has been elusive and painfully slow. Their grief is lived, not imagined. They deserve a process that does not vanish into bureaucracy. Duterte, for his part, is entitled to defend himself fully. Justice demands both truth for the victims and due process for the accused. The ICC’s entry only sharpens the unease: why did neither seem attainable within our own system?
The ICC relies on complementarity—the Court steps in only when a State is unwilling or unable to genuinely investigate. That is not a technicality; it is a judgment on a country’s institutions. ICC filings point to stalled investigations, the absence of prosecutions for thousands of killings, and public statements suggesting that the drug war operated beyond legal scrutiny. Philippine authorities had long insisted otherwise. President Marcos Jr. repeatedly declared that the Philippines was capable of handling its own cases and that ICC intervention was unnecessary.
Yet his administration later surrendered Duterte to The Hague, and this happened only after the public collapse of the UniTeam alliance, when the Marcos and Duterte camps openly broke ranks. The reversal cannot be brushed aside. If the government truly believed our institutions were functioning, what changed? Was this an overdue recognition of institutional weakness, or a shift driven by political realignment? And if the earlier claims of competence were sound, why hand the case over at all?
Supporters of the ICC process argue that the Philippines withdrew from the Rome Statute only after the Court began asking questions that domestic institutions were unwilling to pursue. They point to the limited number of cases filed and the absence of accountability at higher levels. Critics counter that the ICC is stepping into a dispute thick with political motives, where timing and factional battles cannot be ignored. Both sides speak of sovereignty, but they mean different things—one sees it as insulation from external scrutiny, the other as the ability to deliver justice credibly at home. The real tension lies in where accountability should take place.
The ICC’s own record adds another layer. It has indicted dozens of individuals, with outcomes ranging from convictions to acquittals, withdrawn charges, and dismissals. Its history shows both capacity and constraint. That uneven performance matters when the Court enters a case as politically charged as this one. The question is not whether the ICC has the authority to act, but whether its involvement will lead to justice or simply deepen the political fault lines already present.
What this moment exposes is a deeper institutional discomfort. If something is lacking in our justice system—not only in the courts, but in the investigative bodies, the prosecutorial services, and the oversight mechanisms—then the answer is reform. A country confident in its institutions does not fear complementarity; it renders it unnecessary. A country that insists its justice system works must show that it works for all, not only for cases that are convenient or politically safe. Taking our disputes to an international tribunal is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the gap between our constitutional promises and our institutional performance.
In the end, the ICC trial forces us to decide what kind of justice system we want to claim as our own. The families of the victims deserve truth. Duterte deserves due process. And the Philippines deserves institutions strong enough to handle both without external intervention. Complementarity should not be influenced by national politics; it should be rendered irrelevant by a justice system that works. If we do not want the ICC to step in, then we must build institutions that make its involvement unnecessary. Sovereignty is not declared. It is demonstrated.