COURT OF HISTORY
Lifted from Sass Rogando Sasot
25 February 2026
"By accepting the possibility of dying in an ICC cell, Duterte completes this transformation. He ceases to be a defendant seeking justice from the court and becomes, in the eyes of his followers and for the historical record he is a martyr. He is a martyr not for a policy, but for the cause of sovereignty itself, for the principle that a leader’s fate should be decided by his people, not by a distant court backed by global power. The court, in its attempt to avoid being a show trial by giving him a voice, has allowed him to stage a counter-trial. And the final verdict in that counter-trial will not be delivered by the judges in The Hague. It will be rendered by a future generation, looking back at a man who, when placed before the bar of international opinion, refused to plead, refused to recognize the court, and declared his peace from within its own prison walls. In that act of total rupture, he has ensured that his story will outlive the court’s judgment."
Read the rest:
https://asianscholar.substack.com/p/dutertes-strategy-of-rapture
