Forced exile

Acting before the Supreme Court could issue its decision was a betrayal of due process, turning the departure from Villamor Air Base into an abduction.

Transporting former President Rodrigo Duterte to The Hague, intercepted after disembarking at the airport and whisking him away to Villamor Air Base where a private chartered jet awaited to ferry him to the Netherlands, has ignited a controversy.

He was bundled off, taken out of the country on the strength of a Red Notice from the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol).

The sequence of events unfolded without pause, too fast for the Supreme Court to rule on a petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO). What emerged was a probable case of kidnapping, covered by an international proceeding.

The rush smacked of the disposing of a political rival for expediency.

The story began at the airport, where Duterte, a titan of Philippine politics, was arrested mid-stride as he stepped off a plane.

Instead of being afforded a chance to contest his fate within the bounds of domestic law, he was swiftly transported to Villamor Air Base.

There, a private jet stood ready, its engines primed to carry him across continents to the Netherlands, where he faces detention and trial for alleged crimes against humanity.

The chain of actions fueled accusations by Duterte himself that he was not merely detained but effectively abducted.

The essence of kidnapping lies in the unlawful deprivation of liberty, and Duterte’s case fits the mold.

The TRO petition represented a legal instrument to ensure his transfer was scrutinized by the judiciary.

By circumventing it, he was stripped of his right to due process, which is enshrined in Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution, which guarantees that no person shall be deprived of liberty without lawful justification.

The image of a former president, still a formidable political force, being hustled from an airport tarmac to a military base and onto a jet bound for foreign soil evokes a sense of coercion that clashes with the principles of justice.

Critics of the operation might argue that the haste was not incidental but a maneuver to silence Duterte’s ability to rally support or challenge the transfer to ICC jurisdiction.

The swift travel process, at the end of which he must answer charges regarding the anti-drug campaign, was a symbolic uprooting.

To those who saw it as a kidnapping, the failure to await the Supreme Court’s ruling transformed a supposed lawful arrest into an extralegal seizure, orchestrated to place Duterte beyond the reach of the local legal system.

Defenders of the move countered that the arrest and quick transport were grounded on international obligations and urgent security imperatives.

Acting before the Supreme Court could issue its decision was a betrayal of due process, turning the departure from Villamor Air Base into an abduction.

The argument floated was that actions of domestic courts, including the Supreme Court, become moot once Duterte is handed over to the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Yet a legal expert, Dean Ralph Sarmiento of the University of St. La Salle in Bacolod, said that given the unprecedented nature of Duterte’s case and its implications on sovereignty, treaty obligations, and executive powers, the Supreme Court may still rule on the petition despite mootness, particularly to clarify the government’s authority to cooperate with the ICC post-withdrawal.

Another luminary, San Beda Law Dean Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino, said a local court must determine if the investigation or trial for the crimes allegedly committed by Duterte were already ongoing.

If they were, the complementarity principle under Article 17 and Article 53 of the Rome Statute stands in the way of the ICC’s intervention in the Philippines.

None of such local court actions transpired making the whole Tuesday express delivery of Duterte to the ICC a “surrender” as podcaster turned spokesperson Claire Castro termed it.

In reality, it’s an exile forced on the former president.