‘Trial of the century’: Duterte meets justice

THE HAGUE—A decade after former President Rodrigo Duterte launched his scorched-earth drug war, the arc of history is finally bending toward justice. This week witnessed something unprecedented in the global capital of international law: an Asian leader facing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of crimes against humanity.

Despite hiring one of the best-paid law firms—one equipped with a superb public relations arm—the Duterte team repeatedly failed to thwart the proceedings. A year into his detention, it must have dawned on the former president that he is no longer dealing with local courts that he so deftly manipulated and intimidated throughout the decades. I don’t know how Duterte affords his extremely pricey ICC legal team after his lifelong employment as a provincial mayor, but he must have gradually realized that usual antics won’t make a dent in a true court of justice. He has to face the music.

I vividly recall the first wave of extrajudicial killings even before Duterte occupied Malacañang. With the outgoing and seemingly discredited former President Benigno Aquino III packing his goods, police forces preempted the incoming commander in chief’s bloody campaign promise to rid the country of criminals and drug dealers. The first reports and pictures I saw of the incipient drug war were on these august pages.

Despite reassuring the public of his commitment to ”metamorphose” once in office, Duterte doubled down on his most menacing instincts just hours after his first State of the Nation Address. Soon, Manila’s streets turned into killing fields. Critics of the drug war were systematically targeted in the most vicious manner, with outspoken human rights advocates, such as former Sen. Leila de Lima, serving as a test case for Duterte’s ”reign of terror” tactics. When then Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno tried to save our constitutional democracy, she was summarily dismissed on the most dubious grounds. Other opposition leaders were forced into exile or bludgeoned into de facto political silence. Our democratic checks and balances collapsed almost overnight.

Next thing I knew, even my hometown of Baguio City fell under Duterte’s murderous shadow: suspected drug dealers were gunned down on Session Road. Baguio is clearly far from perfect, but until then, I had not even heard of a single incident of heinous crime in our neighborhoods, nor had we confronted an illegal drug epidemic across the metro. As a human rights advocate and a proud Baguio boy, this was both infuriating and humiliating. After Kian delos Santos’ cold-blooded murder by Duterte’s henchmen, I found myself one night just breaking down. While helplessly sobbing and staring into the roof, I shouted, with tears rolling down my cheeks: “What could I have done? Why are we so helpless?”

For all of us who care about human rights and believe in the inalienable rights of every single Filipino, regardless of class or creed, to see Duterte finally facing a measure of justice meant the whole world. To see victims’ families getting their chance to hold the perpetrators accountable—that was soulfully rejuvenating.

This was among the most excruciatingly uncertain journeys for everyone who has desperately sought a measure of justice for tens of thousands of Kian delos Santoses, who were slaughtered just for Duterte’s henchmen to meet their daily “quota” under a phony drug war. And this is precisely why I was deeply disappointed with the timing, if not the implied policy proposal, of certain supposedly progressive legislators, who suddenly spoke of the need to hold the trial in domestic courts rather than in the ICC. “Ideally,” we should not have had someone like Duterte ascending to the presidency, to begin with. Ideally, we should have had a far more strident opposition that could not only protect its brave members, such as De Lima, but also mobilize nationwide resistance before our streets were turned into killing fields. Ideally, we should have fixed our justice system so that we weren’t left with zero action against any of the chief architects of mass killings under Duterte’s watch. Ideally, we should have leaders who are less focused on pandering to the worst instincts of our voters and, instead, guide the lost flock toward the promised land. Ideally, we should have a politics of conviction in the face of the deadly populism that gave us Dutertismo.

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