Baste apologizes to Imee, senator says ‘fear’ triggered mayor’s rant

“Mayor Baste Duterte approached me, and he kept on apologizing,” the senator said in an interview yesterday at the Upper Chamber.

“I understand that he was very emotional. Imagine that your father and sister might be imprisoned – you will really be upset,” she added.

Senator Marcos was apparently referring to the investigation of the International Criminal Court into the former President’s bloody war against illegal drugs.

Former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV earlier said the ICC may issue an arrest warrant by the second quarter of the year as its investigators were done with their probe “as far as the principal accused is concerned.”

Trillanes said the Duterte patriarch is the principal accused, while the secondary and tertiary accused in the probe were Senators Ronald dela Rosa and Christopher Go as well as Vice President Duterte.

The Vice President said she will not submit herself to the ICC probe.

She said this was the first time her name was linked to the issue hounding her father, in particular to the “Davao Death Squad” vigilante group.

“After being elected as vice president, a witness suddenly emerged against me, and now I am included among the accused in the International Criminal Court. I do not need a death squad for things I am capable of doing,” she said.

Senator Marcos, however, distanced herself from the exchange of accusations between the Duterte patriarch and her brother.

“It’s crazy,” she said. “[But] I am not part of that. Let them handle that. They are more than capable of handling that themselves,” she said.

The former President accused his successor of being involved in illegal drugs, to which Mr. Marcos responded by saying the latter’s prolonged use of the “highly addictive” fentanyl may have caused him to make such accusations. — Macon Ramos-Araneta