I wasn’t planning to write about this. But every time the news comes on, the same thought keeps coming back, and I feel like I need to say it out loud.
Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa is invoking due process. He’s gone to the Supreme Court seeking remedies against the ICC arrest warrant, filing petitions and asking for protective orders, the very kind of procedural relief that our remedial law was built to provide. The Rome Statute on its own already guarantees him the right to counsel, to be informed of charges, to challenge jurisdiction, and to contest the admissibility of the case. He should have all of that.
That’s the part that’s hard to sit with.
Because the police’s own tally of drug war deaths was around 6,200. The UN Human Rights Office puts it at 8,663. Independent monitors and rights groups estimate over 12,000. The standard police justification, “nanlaban,” has been so widely documented as fabricated that a former Justice Secretary conceded to the UN that the argument is deeply flawed.
None of those thousands got due process. None of them got to seek remedies. None got hearings, or counsel, or the chance to challenge anything. They were shot in alleys and on sidewalks, often in front of their families.
Bato and Duterte are now seeking remedies from the same system they bypassed. They are demanding due process from the same law they treated as optional. Hearings. Presumption of innocence. The right to be heard.
I’m not saying deny it to them. I’m saying notice what they’re admitting.
They’re admitting that due process matters.
They’re admitting that remedies should exist.
They’re admitting it should have mattered then, too.
The families who buried their loved ones have known this for years. They never had the privilege of seeking remedies. They never even had the privilege of a courtroom.
