Duterte considers vice-president post to gain immunity from prosecution

MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday expressed his willingness to run for vice-president again to obtain immunity from prosecution.

Duterte made this statement at the National Assembly of Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) in Clark, Pampanga.

His openness to running for vice-president in 2022 came, as he criticized his critics, former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and retired Deputy Supreme Court Judge Antonio Carpio, for telling him he would face criminal charges once his term ends next June. year.

“I’m always afraid of being sued. The law says that if you are president, you are vice-president, there is no immunity you, eh, I’m not going to run for vice-presidency (They keep threatening me that I will face charges. The law says that the president and the vice president get immunity. If so, then I will be running for the vice president instead.) ” Duterte said, drawing applause from party members.

Before his final remarks, Duterte said on Monday he was only targeting the vice presidency to “scare” his critics.

On May 31, the PDP-Laban passed a resolution urging Duterte to run for vice-president and choose the party’s standard bearer in the 2022 national elections.

On July 7, Duterte said he was “seriously” considering accepting calls for him to run for the second-highest office in the country.

In a video uploaded to YouTube on July 5, Trillanes said a series of looting cases would be filed against Duterte and his long-time former aide, Senator Christopher Lawrence Go, once they resigned from their functions, in connection with the allegedly abnormal award of public works contracts to construction companies belonging to the senator’s family in the Davao region.

Trillanes has also previously claimed that Duterte must “tremble with fear” amid the possibility of the latter being arrested, should the International Criminal Court find him guilty of committing a crime against humanity as part of his anti-human campaign. narcotics.

Duterte, however, reiterated that the ICC would never have jurisdiction over him since the Rome Statute establishing the international court was never published in a mass-circulation newspaper or the country’s Official Gazette.

“You know, I’m a lawyer and they’ll never be able to acquire jurisdiction over me, not in a million years,” he said. “Failure to publish a law or a treaty whatever it is, especially a penal law, if you do not publish it, it becomes fatal. It is as if there is no law because it is only by publishing it in the Official Gazette that Filipinos are informed that there is a law.

Fatou Bensouda, whose term as ICC prosecutor ended on June 15, asked the pre-trial chamber of the court to authorize the conduct of an investigation into the alleged crime against humanity during the anti-human rights campaign. drug of the Duterte administration.

On its official website, the ICC called on the families of victims of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign to come forward and raise concerns about the demand for further investigation.

The ICC is asking for details on what happened to the victims, who the victims think is responsible, and when and where the incident happened.

The deadline for submitting victim representations to the ICC is August 13 of this year.

Duterte in March 2018 ordered the Philippines’ withdrawal from the Rome Statute that created the ICC after Bensouda completed the preliminary review of his campaign against illegal drugs in February 2018.

The Philippines officially severed ties with the ICC on March 17, 2019, exactly one year after Duterte’s revocation of the Rome Statute. (ANP)