The selection of the worst among the vast canon of Rodrigo Duterte of despicable comments is a task that takes you away from you the second where you think you have seized it. Was it when he described the pope as a “whore son”? When he “joked” about wanting to violate an Australian missionary? Or was it when he said journalists should be killed? It was perhaps the comment: “Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts. I would be happy to shoot them ”?
I had put at the top of this list the moralizing comments he made after being arrested Tuesday on the mandate of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Duterte is accused of crimes against humanity for his war against drugs on a national level and in the city of Davao, where he was mayor before becoming president in 2016. Until 30,000 people were killed, many in an extrajudicial manner by the police.
“What is the law and what is the crime I have committed?” I was brought here not of my own will, it is that of someone else. You must respond now for the deprivation of freedom, “he apparently said in a video filmed by one of his daughters just after his arrest.
In one way or another, I find that tears are struggling to come. I know that Duterte said things that are more horrible than that, but these remarks give a taste of the unrepentant self-pity of man. Barely a few months ago, he challenged “to hurry”. “It takes a long time … I could be dead before they can investigate me,” said the avowed murderer, who turned as soon as the wrists continued.
What crime? In October, Duterte got up in the Senate and said that he had “no apology, no apology” for his drug war. “Despite all its successes and shortcomings, me and me alone, ensure full legal responsibility for everything they have done in accordance with my orders,” he said. Admittedly, he said that he had not ordered the chiefs of the national police of extrajudicial murder, but I ask: what are the chances that someone who (confessed) supervised extrajudicial murders when the mayor of Davao City could then become president and has nothing to do with extrajudicial murders nationwide? It may be just a coincidence that the same person said a few days before being elected: “If I arrive at the presidential palace, I will do exactly what I did as mayor. You, drug shoots, hold-up men and roars to do, you’d better go out. Because I would kill you. Fortunately, the CPI prosecutors will have many tangible evidence, not coincidence, at hand once the trial is at the start.
And what is the law? Well, international law, the same that he knowingly tried to avoid when he withdrew the Philippines from the status of Rome during his presidency. Alas, the same corpus of law also allows Duterte a team of expensive defense lawyers, probably a fancy hotel room, and the procedure and decorum of an international courtroom – all the luxury he refused to men slaughtered for $ 300 to $ 14,000 per head (the bonus that a policeman could win for each sculpture).
And as for his deprivation of his freedom – Abraham Lincoln has once defined a hypocrite as a man who murdered his parents and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. A good second definition would be the groan of Duterte. But who is crying for the executioner but himself? Once in The Hague, Duterte will probably not regret criminal decisions, or pride and arrogance, which led him there; It is not of the ruminative type. But his logorrhea (“verbal diarrhea” away) was a large part of the reason why he became president in the first place, why he remained popular throughout and why he will probably be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Duterte is invariably known as “Trump of the Philippines” (better to call Trump the “American Duterte” because the Americans have not invented despotic populists). It is a brutal reminder of the way the paths can diverge: the “American duterte” can obtain a Nobel Peace Prize by strengthening the Russian and Israeli colonialists; The real Duterte should have lucky to take a clean shower and three square meals a day.
The only people who come out of this saga with all honor are courageous activists who have fought hard for justice for many years, many at personal risks. Apart from them, Duterte looks like the criminal he is; His family looks just as despicable as those who still have shilling for him; And President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., a friend of the Dutertes when it adapted him, seems to have loose for having only accepted the mandate of the ICC now that his rift with vice-president Sara Duterte, Rodrigo’s daughter, is no longer an electoral risk-and the arrest of Duterte may perhaps an electoral gain. Yes, this is politics, but the right decisions are degraded by being taken only when they are practical.
And most of the Philippins do not come out of that either. Say what you like in the war of Duterte against drugs – “criminal”, “illegal”, “barbaric”, “inhuman”, “unsuccessful” are some of the adjectives that jump in mind – you cannot say that it was unpopular. Between 2017 and 2022, the probe after the probe in Sondactrs asked the Philippins what they thought, and the majority did not seem to have a problem with barbarism. Duterte left office as president who came out the most popular.
You cannot claim that most of the Philippins did not know what he would do once they put it in the palace of Malacañang. The only thing everyone knew about Duterte is that he murdered people. In 2016, he admitted publicly: “In Davao, I did it personally. Just to show the [police officers] that if I can do it, why not you. “All his presidential campaign was based on the premise that, if he was elected, he would kill again, this time only nationwide. And he obtained about 17 million votes, almost double his rivals.
In such a Catholic society, it is not surprising that some have already started to portray Duterte as a martyr, from what I am not too sure. Nor do I know if the sacred analogy made of Marcos Pontius Pilate or Judas. I do not remember Jesus Christ moving to arrive too late to join the rape of a woman or him who calls the “sons of Sanhedrin sluts”. It is perhaps in one of the non-canonical gospels where Jesus boasts of the murder of people with his own hands.
Duterte’s arrest is a victory for a common decency. However, some things should be regretted. First, it would have been better if Duterte was tried in the Philippines. Duterte’s apologists will affirm that any trial lacks legitimacy, and Marcos would have been informed that a local audience would have been politically risky – it is better to do justice there than to allow a trial to descend into the mud here. We can ignore the banal gobbets of Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky affirming that international justice is only justice for losers, not for the powerful (I would like to see what the “loser’s justice” looks like). But there is a vicicality to international justice, like someone else delivering the final chop that falls on a tree that you have spent years eliminating.
Again, most of the courageous from the Philippines who fought to obtain a kind of justice would be happy for an appointment with Duterte in The Hague.