Rodrigo Duterte has now publicly and categorically denied killing after a communication and a supplemental communication were filed with the Office of the ICC (International Criminal Court), calling an investigation into alleged "crimes against humanity" perpetrated or mastermind by him.
Can the community and the nations play a role in holding Duterte to account?
The answer as reported is complicated.
Given the constitutional provision allowing a mere third of the membership of the House of Representative to directly send the impeachable official to trial in the Senate (this is a copied from American political tradition).
But the House is firmly in the grip of Duterte's so-called super-majority and the chances of potentially against him was dismissed last month. A constitutional provision prevents the House from considering more than one impeachment complaint against an official every 12 months.
Two confessed assasins who testified against self-interest that they took order from Duterte when he was the mayor of Davao City, was ridiculed or trivialised in the Senate except as a basis to filed charge on them. House also played a shameful role in laundering so-called evidence against Senator Leila De Lima (a staunchest critic of Duterte) , whom has since been arrested and held in detention.
About imposition of Martial Law in Mindanao, the Senate and the House have received it timitdly to deliberate on the proclaimation. Instead of a joint-session, th Super-majority in each chamber insisted a joint-session to deliberate was all necessary only if Congress wanted to revoke. Each Chamber then promptly passed the resolutions affirming Martial Law for Mindanao.
Apparently, self-awareness and institutional diginity are not high on the list of values held by the Congress.
The UN special rapporteur for extraljudicial killings, lawyer Agnes Callamard, has been actively monitoring reports of human rights abuses committed in the anti-drug campaign but the government says she is not welcome to return to the Phillipines. It will be difficult to imagine the UN or the EU dropping its human rights advocacy merely because Duterte refuses to listen, but the questions of influence is a legitimate one. That leaves ICC's prosecutor acting on a "communication and supplemental communication" to call for an investigation into the alleged crimes against humanity perpetrated and masterminded by Duterte.
Reference: Asia News Network
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