Fellowship of the discredited

The ICC proceeding played out, not as a pursuit of justice, but a grotesque flexing of power, where the former president was kicked and trampled on.

Two points raised by former executive secretary Salvador Medialdea, one of the counsels of President Rodrigo Duterte in his International Criminal Court trial in The Hague, pierced straight to the heart of the former chief executive’s ordeal.

Medialdea cited the unholy union forged by the desperate entities who want to use Duterte as a tool for redemption.

“Two troubled entities struck an unlikely alliance, an incumbent President who wished to neutralize and choke the legacy of my client and his daughter, on the one hand, and a troubled legal institution subject to delegitimization and desperate for a prize catch and a legal show today, on the other,” Medialdea said in his manifestation before the ICC.

He also cited the circumstances that pointed to the abduction of Mr. Duterte from the Philippines to The Hague. “Private jets do not drop out of thin air. That jet which received my client was coordinated in advance,” he said.

To backtrack, the administration had been casting the dragnet for Duterte since February, with some sources saying the EDSA busway incident in which Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil’s convoy was flagged down had to do with the operation against Duterte.

Marbil, a day after, in an apparent slip of the tongue, said “an emergency meeting of top police officials with Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla” led to the use of the busway by his convoy.

“There was an emergency meeting and there’s this issue which (Remulla) will announce regarding an accomplishment last night which required the presence of higher-ups to attend the closed-door meeting last night,” Marbil had said in a radio interview.

The accomplishment was the issuance of the ICC warrant of arrest for Duterte.

The ICC proceeding played out, not as a pursuit of justice, but a grotesque flexing of power where the former president was kicked and trampled on.

Medialdea’s opening address indicated the plan of the legal team to expose a conspiracy of two forces seeking their self-preservation.

The ICC is teetering on the edge of irrelevance, clawing for a high-profile scalp to justify its existence.

Recent actions of the United States against the hypocritical tribunal indicated that it is plunging head first into ignominy.

Within weeks of taking office, US President Donald Trump signed a new executive order — echoing his 2020 approach — imposing sanctions on ICC officials involved in cases targeting US citizens and allies, explicitly Israel.

The order authorizes asset freezes and entry bans for ICC personnel and those assisting investigations deemed contrary to US interests.

Trump called the ICC “illegitimate” and accused it of setting a “dangerous precedent” by infringing on nations’ sovereignty.

The ICC, thus, desperately needs a “prize catch” to stage a legal circus and prop up its crumbling legitimacy. Duterte, who willingly surrendered to the ICC, will be a pawn to remove the stigma of illegitimacy.

The process undertaken to haul Duterte off to the clutches of the ICC was the second point Medialdea raised. “Private jets do not drop out of thin air,” he thundered, and he’s damn right.

The sleek aircraft that whisked Duterte off to The Hague didn’t materialize by chance — it was orchestrated, a seizure cloaked as a legal process.

The private jet is owned by a subsidiary of a big business interest with several ongoing projects that need government approval.

The coordination stinks of backroom deals, of whispered agreements between the elite and The Hague’s bureaucrats to silence a man who gave a middle finger to the status quo.

Duterte, for all his flaws, was a man who wielded ferocity with a pure intention that terrified the comfortable and the corrupt.

His existence threatens the survival of those who fear his shadow.