PRRD VS ICC
Opticsl Politics
20 February 2026
EDITORIAL | Duterte Defies ICC Authority, Calls Arrest ‘Kidnapping’ as Philippines’ Role Comes Under Fire
OPTIC Politics | February 20, 2026
Rodrigo Duterte’s request to waive his attendance at the ICC confirmation hearing was not an act of weakness. It was an act of strategy. In one procedural stroke, he exposed three uncomfortable truths: the prosecution’s contempt for the rights of the accused, the political character of his transfer to The Hague, and the quiet complicity of the Philippine state in what he now calls an abduction dressed as law.
This was not a medical plea. It was not a retreat. It was a legal provocation.
By seeking to waive his presence before the hearing even begins, Duterte forced the prosecution to reveal its posture in advance: it insisted on his physical or virtual attendance despite full knowledge of his age and documented frailty. The law does not demand performative cruelty. The Rome Statute allows waiver at the confirmation stage precisely because presence is a right, not an obligation. Yet the prosecution argued as though dignity were optional and compulsion a virtue. That posture did not strengthen their case; it weakened their moral authority. It told the world that symbolism mattered more than the accused’s autonomy, and optics more than due process.
The irony is lethal. The same prosecution that claims to stand for victims was willing to trample the most elementary safeguard of criminal justice: the right of the accused to choose how he participates in proceedings. This is not justice as principle. This is justice as theater.
But the true genius of the move lay elsewhere. The waiver became a vehicle—not for silence, but for accusation. Duterte used a procedural right to place on record a political claim: that he was forcibly taken to The Hague, and that this transfer was executed under the authority of the sitting president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., with Philippine institutions acting not as guardians of sovereignty but as instruments of surrender. In one filing, he reframed himself from defendant to detainee, from suspect to seized citizen.
At the same time, Duterte made explicit that he does not recognize the jurisdiction of the Court over him. His reasoning is not emotional; it is structural. The Philippines has withdrawn from the Rome Statute. Whatever obligations once existed were terminated by sovereign act. A tribunal whose authority depends on treaty consent cannot claim permanence over a state that has formally exited its legal order.
More decisively, Duterte argues that the case fails the most basic test of international criminal law: necessity. The International Criminal Court is a court of last resort. It is activated only when a state is unwilling or unable to prosecute. The Philippines, however, has a fully functioning and active judicial system—trial courts, appellate courts, and a Supreme Court—that remains capable of hearing any criminal complaint arising from anti-drug operations. There is no legal vacuum. There is no collapse of justice. There is no failed state condition that justifies international substitution.
Under this view, the ICC’s intervention is not complementary. It is redundant.
And beyond redundancy lies distortion. Duterte maintains that the alleged acts do not qualify as crimes against humanity under international law, which requires a widespread or systematic attack against civilians pursuant to state policy. Law enforcement operations—however controversial—do not automatically become crimes against humanity merely because they produce fatalities. To reclassify domestic policing as international atrocity is not legal evolution; it is category collapse.
His absence, therefore, is not merely physical. It is jurisdictional. He does not merely refuse to attend; he refuses to consent to the premise of the Court’s authority. The waiver transforms a procedural moment into a sovereignty dispute before the first word of evidence is even tested. The question becomes not only whether there is sufficient proof, but whether the tribunal itself has the moral and legal right to sit in judgment at all.
The prosecution’s aggressive response only amplified this effect. By demanding his presence, it inadvertently confirmed the strategic value of his absence. It showed that what they fear is not procedural delay, but narrative loss. His empty chair will speak. His non-appearance will dominate headlines. And his written words—“kidnapped,” “unlawful,” “no jurisdiction”—will circulate without the distraction of a frail body in a glass booth.
This is where the judges’ ruling became decisive. By granting the waiver before the hearing begins, they restored the distinction between right and compulsion. They did not endorse Duterte’s claims. But they refused to become instruments of the prosecution’s impatience. In doing so, they unintentionally validated the core of his gambit: that the confirmation hearing is about law, not spectacle.
And spectacle is exactly what the prosecution wanted.
For the Philippine state, this episode is more damning than any ruling from The Hague. A former president now approaches an international tribunal claiming he was seized with the cooperation of his own government. The agencies that should have protected jurisdiction—law enforcement, justice, interior—are painted as accessories, not actors. Whether one believes Duterte or not is secondary. What matters is that the charge now exists inside a legal process that cannot pretend it was never said.
This is the paradox of power: the stronger the institution, the more dangerous it is when it overreaches. By opposing a waiver the law clearly allows, the prosecution did not project strength. It projected insecurity. By insisting on presence over principle, it exposed a preference for control over consent.
Duterte’s move does not seek acquittal. It seeks repositioning. He denies the Court’s jurisdiction while exploiting its procedures. He uses a technical right to challenge a political transfer. He turns legal form into political force.
This is why the waiver matters. Not because he stays away—but because, in staying away, he forces every actor to reveal their role. The prosecution reveals its impatience with rights. The Philippine state reveals its alignment with external authority. And the Court reveals, at least in this instance, that law still has space to breathe.
In chess, the most dangerous move is not the one that takes a piece.
It is the one that exposes the board.
This waiver does exactly that.
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