Dispatch from Crame No. 257:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima's statement on President Duterte's attacks on ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard

3/9/18

Duterte's barbaric words for ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard shows that he has just recently emerged from a cave that has deprived him of civilization all his life. He might call his own son Paolo a "gangster" in the same speech, but anyone listening might as well call the President a caveman.

For someone who is supposedly unperturbed by the ICC's conduct of a preliminary examination on the Philippines, Duterte gives an inordinate amount of public speeches to lambasting the ICC prosecutor and UN officials. It appears that the President is not entirely unaffected by the threat of an ICC investigation, indictment, and trial. He looks scared, and he is taking out his anxiety over his possible arrest by the ICC on "that black woman" from Ghana.

However, even his worries has not made him study the procedure of the ICC. Duterte is under the impression that he has a say on any future indictment in The Hague, and that he can resist its jurisdiction. He is of course ignorant on what the Rome Statute is all about.

When the time comes, he will just read from the papers that an international warrant of arrest has already been issued against him. He can resist it by hiding in a hole, like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Khaddafy. But the entire world will be looking for him and hunting him down, in the same way all international criminals indicted by the ICC were chased and hunted down. He won't be able to go out of the country without facing arrest, except of course in China where he will be warmly welcomed and lavishly rewarded as the man who single-handedly turned the Philippines into a Chinese province.

Duterte will have no problem hiding in a hole once the ICC calls for his arrest. After all, he has been living in a cave his whole life.