The co-perpetrators

All indications point to Rodrigo Duterte facing trial this year before the International Criminal Court for murder as a crime against humanity.

The only question is who else will eventually join him at the ICC detention facility in Scheveningen Prison in The Hague.

On Feb. 13, the ICC identified Duterte’s alleged “co-perpetrators,” several of whom had already been named months ago by persons who are in touch with the ICC. Last year, these persons said the court would limit the number of those who would face trial, to speed up the process, leaving it up to Philippine authorities to deal with lower-ranking former government officials.

These persons said only two are certain to be sought by the ICC: Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the muscle in the bloody war on drugs, and Duterte’s anak-anakan Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go, accused of overseeing a reward scheme to incentivize the systematic extermination of drug suspects.

Go was tagged in the reward system during the investigation conducted by the House quad comm in 2024 – a charge he vehemently denied. His inclusion in the ICC list was expected after his accuser, former PNP colonel and sweepstakes office chief Royina Garma, was allowed to leave the country in September last year for Malaysia.

Despite facing a criminal case as the accused mastermind in the murder of former sweepstakes board secretary Wesley Barayuga, there was still no court-issued arrest warrant for Garma when she left the country. She is now said to be under the protective custody of the ICC.

Oscar Albayalde, who succeeded Dela Rosa as Philippine National Police chief, may be spared from ICC arrest, according to the chatter last year. But Albayalde is now included in the ICC list of alleged co-perpetrators, along with Duterte’s justice chief at the height of Oplan Tokhang, Vitaliano Aguirre II, and Dante Gierran, former National Bureau of Investigation chief.

The others are accused of being part of the so-called Davao death squads: former Davao City police chiefs Vicente Danao and Isidro Lapeña (who later headed the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency). Another accused co-perpetrator, Camilo Cascolan, former PNP operations chief and Metro Manila police regional director, died in November 2023.

Bato dela Rosa has been missing in action from the Senate since Nov. 11 last year amid reports that the ICC has ordered his arrest. Bong Go may soon do the same, pausing his visits to fire victims all over the country.

With these developments, over 500 relatives of tokhang victims accepted by the ICC as participants in the proceedings may see their ranks swell in the coming weeks.

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If the UniTeam had not broken up, could those hundreds have dared to dream of getting justice for their slain relatives? Could we have imagined seeing Digong Duterte behind bars in a member state of his bête noire the European Union?

Duterte won the presidency by a landslide on a campaign promise of killing drug dealers and addicts. He delivered on that promise, and openly bragged about it throughout his presidency, never keeping the bloodshed secret.

So when Bongbong Marcos was scouting for a running mate in 2022, he and his camp were surely fully aware of the bloody legacy of the family with which he chose to forge a unified team.

I don’t buy that teasing comment of megastar Sharon Cuneta to BBM at an event for artists last week, that he made the wrong choice for his vice president.

It was in fact the perfect choice for the only son and namesake of Ferdinand Marcos, who wanted to return to power to remake his dictator father’s image and rehabilitate the Marcos name. The UniTeam proved formidable, a juggernaut that crushed the fragmented opposition, allowing the Marcoses to make a spectacular political comeback.

Today both camps in the former UniTeam are regretting the alliance and vowing never again. But the 2025 midterm elections as well as surveys indicate that supporters of the Dutertes have no regrets about backing the clan, including the family’s brand: a hardline approach to criminality.

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Due to the weakness of the judicial system, Filipinos have a long record of going for politicians seen to deliver swift justice, even at the expense of human rights.

Before Duterte, Filipinos had picked tough-talking Joseph Estrada, a.k.a. showbiz’s Asiong Salonga, the Pinoy Robin Hood. Erap’s chief anti-crime enforcer was Panfilo Lacson, whose take-no-prisoners approach to organized gangs earned him criminal indictments but also propelled him to the Senate.

That weakness in the judicial system compelled the ICC to step into the drug war probe, as it deemed the country’s institutions unable and unwilling to prosecute Duterte and his minions for possible mass murder as a crime against humanity.

The country passed Republic Act 9851, the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity way back in December 2009. But there was never any effort to prosecute anyone involved in Duterte’s drug war for possible violation of RA 9851.

Now relatives of over 6,000 people killed in the brutal crackdown are daring to hope for justice, courtesy of a foreign court.

Unless the majority of Filipinos, however, will stop believing that the weakness of the criminal justice system makes extrajudicial short cuts necessary for peace and order, the emergence of another Rodrigo Duterte will remain a strong possibility.

We might see this in 2028, if the groups opposed to both the Dutertes and Marcos-Romualdez clans remain as fragmented as in 2022 and fail to unite behind a strong challenger to Sara Duterte.

The room for systemic reforms before 2028 shrinks every day. If the abuses in the war on drugs are repeated, accountability should be pursued right here in our own country. And the pursuit of justice should not arise from political warfare, but from institutional strength and integrity.