MANILA – Malacañang said there is nothing to worry about the withdrawal of the Philippines from the International Criminal Court (ICC) since the country already has laws that cover jurisdictional crimes that the Rome Statute-established court caters to.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said any Filipino who seeks redress for grievances on any kind of injustice is free to file a complaint before Philippine courts under Philippine laws.
“Detractors of the President are quick to harp on the alleged injustices in the Philippines. They appear not to know or simply ignore the fact that the jurisdictional crimes of the ICC are already covered by our domestic laws,” Panelo said.
The country’s withdrawal from ICC formalized on Sunday – a year after President Rodrigo Duterte made the declaration in light of the court’s investigation into his administration’s bloody war on drugs.
Panelo said the Philippines has never been a state party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the ICC, and it pursuing the investigation on the country’s “war on drugs” constitutes to interference.
“The Philippines cannot leave that which has never joined,” Panelo said. “The Philippines never became a State Party to the Rome Statute which created the ICC. As far as we are concerned, this tribunal is non-existent and its actions a futile exercise.”
He added: “Should the ICC proceed with its undertakings relative to the Philippines and violate the provisions of the instrument which created it in the process, it can only mean that it is bent on interfering with the sovereignty of our republic.”
The Palace official also said “such intrusion can only validate the theory of the countries that withdrew their membership and those that do not want to join it that the ICC continues to exercise unaccountable prosecutorial powers and has become a tool for political prosecution thereby a threat to the national sovereignty of countries>”
Before the Philippines expressed their withdrawal, Burundi, Gambia, and South Africa have attempted to withdraw from the ICC. Gambia and South Africa later retracted their plan but Burundi went through with the proceedings and left the court on Oct. 27, 2017./PN
