(Eagle News)–The Palace on Sunday, March 17, defended the Philippines’ withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, saying from the country’s perspective, the tribunal was “non-existent.”
“The Philippines cannot leave that which has never joined in the first place. Our position on the matter remains clear, unequivocal and inflexible: The Philippines never became a State Party to the Rome Statute which created the ICC,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement on the day the withdrawal was finalized, a year after the country informed the United Nations it was exiting the tribunal.
Panelo was echoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s statement, who said the Rome Statute was not in effect in the Philippines because it was never published in any newspaper of general circulation or the Official Gazette as required of any law for it to take effect.
“As far as we are concerned, this tribunal is non-existent and its actions a futile exercise,” Panelo said.
As such, Panelo said “there is therefore absolutely no basis for the ICC to continue whatever it started against the President or the Philippines.”
He was referring to the ICC’s probe into the drug war.
The tribunal has launched a preliminary examination of the two communications filed before it by drug war critics, including Senator Antonio Trillanes IV.
Panelo said “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.”
“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,” Panelo said.
“Nor is there any basis for the opposition and the critics’ perorations on the subject,” he added.
