Several of his 80th birthday, Rodrigo Duterte, a man who once promised to clean his country through a bloody drug and crime campaign, He found himself surpassed and in custody.
The former president was welcomed by the Philippine police, while in Manila he arrived at a flight from Hong Kong, where he gathered support for his candidates for the upcoming middle -day elections among the great Philippine diaspora there.
The order for a lot of speech for his arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was, it turned out, already in the hands of the Government of the Philippine, which quickly started to execute it.
Flail Mr. Duterte, walking with a stick, was transferred to the air base inside the perimeter of the airport. Chartered the jet was quickly ready to take him to the ICC in The Hague.
How did it happen? How is a man so powerful and popular, often called “Trump Asia”, brought in so low?
In vain, his lawyers and family members protested that the arrest had no legal basis and they complained that Duterete’s health had been neglected.
While he was in office, Mr. Duterte made an alliance with the Marcos family – the children of the worn dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who worked for a long time on a political return. Mr. Duterte could not re -run in the 2022 elections, but his daughter Sara, the mayor of the southern city Davioa, was also a popular and strong candidate to replace him.
However, the son of Ferdinand Marcos Bongbong, who has been in politics all his life, was also well set up to win and very well funded.
Two families concluded a contract. They would work together for Bongbong to enter the Presidency and Sara into the Vice -President, assuming that the next elections in 2028 came, her turn would come and she would have an incredible Marcos machine behind her.
It worked. They both won their positions with a wide margin. Mr. Duterte expected that his covenant would protect him from any return because of his controversial presidency after he was not in power.
The most serious threat that hung over him was an ICC investigation for his guilt for thousands of out -of -court killings conducted during the drug campaigns he ordered – after becoming the president in 2016, but also during his term of office as the mayor of the southern city from 2011.
Mr. Duterte withdrew the Philippines for the jurisdiction of the ICC in 2019, but his prosecutors claimed that they still had a mandate to consider the alleged crimes against humanity committed before, and launched a formal investigation into 2021. However, President Marcos initially stated that his government would not be cooperated with ICC.
This position changed only after a dramatic decay of the duterete-marcos alliance. The strains in their relationship were visible from the earliest days of the administration, when the request of Sara Duterte was obtained by the control of the powerful Ministry of Defense rejected and instead received the Ministry of Education.
President Marcos also distanced himself from the Mercury Policy of his predecessor, repairing fences with the US, getting up to China in the disputed seas and stopping threats of blood blood from retaliation against the drug seller.
In the end, these were two ambitious clans that were the main for the power to dominate the Philippine policy, and there was not enough power to share. Relationships reached Nadir last year when Sara Duterte announced that she had hired a killer for the murder of President Marcos if anything happened to her.
At the end of last year, the House of Congress, which is controlled by Loyalists Marcos, filed a petition to abolish Mrs. Duterte. This trial should be held in Senate later this year.
If she was abolished, according to the Constitution, she would be forbidden to perform her high political duty, killing her long -standing presidential ambitions and even more weak the political power of Dutertes.
The President Marcos seems to have shifted now to neutralize his main political rival. But his strategy is not risk without risk. Duters are still popular in most of the country and may be able to mobilize protests against the prosecution of the former president.
Sara Duterte issued a statement that accused the Government of handing over to her father with “foreign forces” and to violate the Philippine sovereignty.
The early test of support in which both clans enjoyed the middle -day elections in May.
In his comments to reporters after the plane carried by his predecessor withdrew from Manila, President Marcos insisted that he fulfill the land obligations to Interpol, which was delivered by the ICC. But he was in line with the fact that it was a warrant for the ICC he did, since many Filipinos would question what ICC’s task in the country that has already left its jurisdiction.
ICC is not at risk either. The court is a built -in institution these days, with Trump administration threatening to arrest their best officials if they travel to the US, and few countries who are ready to extradite the ones she accused. Therefore, former Duterte President in The Hague might look like a welcome success.
But there was a warning from China, though, the ICC signatory was not a signatory, and currently in Loggerheads with the Philippines -not to politicize ICC cases. This was a thinly larger reference to the fact that this case, which should be responsible for serious international crimes, eventually played a decisive role in domestic quarrels on the Philippines between the two rival political forces.
