The arrest warrant was given to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines at Manila at 3 am on Tuesday. The person named there: his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, the Brando who The war against drugs left thousands of deaths.
But acting on the mandate of the International Criminal Court was not easy, because the Philippines are not a member of the court. Thus, at 6:30 am, the government of Mr. Marcos received another mandate for Mr. Duterte, this time from Interpol, who acted on behalf of the court and whose Philippines is a member.
Mr. Marcos recalled his next stage on Tuesday in an address to the nation. “Okay, we will put all our plans in place, and go as we discussed it,” he said after having declared to the head of his Ministry of Justice.
A few hours later, Mr. Duterte – who long seemed above the law – was arrested in Manila. At the end of the day, he had been placed on a plane bound for the Hague Face accusations of crimes against humanity.
It was a quick Coda at a long chapter of impunity in the Philippines. Only a handful of people were sentenced as part of Mr. Duterte’s Drugs War, in which up to 30,000 people died. Now, the man who publicly attacked the carnage was sent to a court to deal with justice, partly because of a change of political winds.
Mr. Marcos, the son of the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, went up to power after Alliance With Sara Duterte, a daughter of M. Duterte. Delivering themselves to a national unit platform, they won the presidency and the vice-president in 2022. But their convenience marriage began to collapse quickly, motivated by distrust.
Ms. Duterte, who leads in the polls to succeed cut your head And threatening to dig up his father’s body and throw it into the ocean. His own father described the young M. Marcos as “drug addict” and a “weak leader”.
Mr. Marcos mainly postponed comments and said little audience. But its allies DESTITUE MME DUTERTE Last month, jeopardizing his political career.
Then came the arrest of her father, whom she and her allies denounced as political oppression, although Mr. Marcos declared that he had simply followed the international convention by complying with the mandate of Interpol.
“It was justice, whatever we got here,” said Maria Ressa, the journalist winner of the Nobel Prize which has long been a target of Mr. Duterte because his news website, bringing back, investigated the drug war.
“Now is there any politics involved? There is always politics, ”she added. “But it is a reminder to the rest of the world that responsibility comes for you sooner or later and that this impunity does not last forever.”
It was still difficult for some Philippins to believe that such a moment had arrived.
Florecia Perez and the son of Joemarie Claverio, Jenel Claverio, 27, were killed by masked men in Navotas in December 2019. This week, Ms. Perez said in an interview, she pumped her first in the air when she thought that the news would make her cry.
While they were about to sleep, she hugged him from behind. “I said,” Hon, Duterte was arrested. He turned to me and said, “Oh? Will he not be able to escape? »»
Mr. Duterte landed in the Netherlands on Wednesday evening, and he was to be taken to The Hague, where the ICC and his detention facilities are based. A head of the court said that Mr. Duterte should not appear before the court on Wednesday, but he would probably be brought to justice before a panel of three judges in the coming days.
The ICC generally has a long preliminary procedure, and a planned trial should not start for months.
Ms. Duterte was also on the way to The Hague, to help organize her father’s legal team. Another daughter of the former leader, Veronica Duterte, published video call screenshots with their father when he was on the plane. In an Instagram post, she wrote: “A flight for more than eight hours but left with just a sandwich to eat ???”
But thousands of people rejoiced when the chartered flight carrying Mr. Duterte took off from an air base in Manila. For some, it recalled when Mr. Marcos’ father was ousted almost four decades ago and fled to the United States.
“This is not quite what it had to be for my parents on February 25 with these titles of the newspaper, saying:” It’s over, Marcos Part “, but it was quite close,” said Sol Iglesias, assistant professor of political science at the University of the Philippines. (Critics accuse the youngest Mr. Marcos of trying Hounding History by not correctly recognizing the meaning of this day in 1986.)
Iglesias said that it was clear that the current president had given authorization from the general campaign to reduce the power of the Dutertes in recent months.
“None of these elements would have been possible without its assent,” she said.
Although he has once promised not to cooperate with the ICC, Marcos told journalists in November that he would not block the court and that he had obligations with Interpol.
Mr. Duterte left office with one of the highest approval notes in the history of the Philippines, and Mrs. Duterte is still in the process of survey for the presidency in 2028, but the arrest now leaves it in a very vulnerable position. And in recent months, the Dutertes have not been able to galvanize large crowds for their protests.
By approving the arrest of Mr. Duterte, Mr. Marcos plays that he can eliminate the Dutertes as a political force without any major counterposter. The problem is now likely to be at the center of mid-term elections, considered as a proxy battle between the Marcoses and the Dutertes, in May.
Two allies of Duterte – his former assistant, Christopher “Bong”, goes; And a former police chief, Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, the architect of the drug war by Mr. Duterte – asks for a re -election in the Senate. Later this year, the Filipino senators will decide to condemn Ms. Duterte for her dismissal. A decision against her would put it almost out of the race for the first job.
Until now, public feeling seems to be behind Mr. Marcos. An investigation in March 2024 among more than 1,700 Philippins showed that almost three out of five approved the ICC investigation.
Wednesday evening, in the city of Cotobato, a bastion of Mr. Duterte, the residents held banners and mobile phones on to protest against his arrest. A few hundred people presented themselves, but the demonstration quickly died out.
MARSE Simons contributed the Paris reports, and Aie Balagtas see And Camille Elemia of Manila.
