Will Rodrigo Duterte be seen a symbol of justice finally being carried out?
The Philippines 'war on drugs' put the former president in the crosshairs of the ICC. His arrest is a welcome reminder that the rule of law still stands.
Rodrigo Duterte, who was president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022, never made much effort to disguise his brutal “war on drugs”. As recently as last October, he testified to a Filipino investigation that, along with licensing police and paramilitaries to proceed as they pleased, he had personally directed an off-the-books squad of hit men, who he described as “gangsters”. If the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who in March charged Duterte with crimes against humanity and extradited him to The Hague, cannot make this one stick then they should seek alternative employment.
Duterte always justified the lurid violence of his admittedly popular crackdown on the Philippines’ drug trade by calling it war. But war is governed by laws as well. Duterte now awaits a hearing in September to determine if the case will go to trial. He is already 80 years old so this indictment might not necessitate a guilty verdict to effectively result in a life sentence. But his arrest is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely descended into a free-for-all, even if recent history might have given that impression. In the past few years alone, Russia has visited violence on a neighbouring country for no good reason; Israel, though provoked, has pounded Gaza to rubble; and the citizens of the US have re-elected to their presidency a convicted criminal. Yet the rule of law is hanging on. Russian president Vladimir Putin and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are wanted men: neither will ever be able to travel entirely unburdened by worry that someone at the other end might serve the arrest warrants issued by the ICC. Should Donald Trump not find a way to install himself as president-for-life, he could still be reacquainted with charges overhanging from his first term.
All of which might not seem much but it is not nothing: if Duterte’s incarceration prompts one despot to pause and consider that actions today can have consequences tomorrow, it might save lives. Back in 1998 former Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London by British police serving an Interpol warrant issued by a Spanish judge for crimes committed during his dictatorship two decades previously. The law needs not just a long arm but a long memory.
Andrew Mueller is the host of the ‘Foreign Desk’ on Monocle Radio.
