SC ruling ends debates on Duterte’s authority to withdraw from treaties, says Panelo

The Supreme Court’s decision to junk petitions questioning the Philippines’ exit from International Criminal Court (ICC) ends debates on President Rodrigo Duterte’s authority to pull out from treaties and international agreements, presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo claimed on Tuesday. 

“The decision puts to rest the debate on the authority of the President to withdraw from treaties and international agreements,” Panelo said in a statement.

“As we have repeatedly articulated in many fora, such exercise is the sole prerogative vested by law upon the President as head of state and as the chief architect of our country's foreign policy,” Panelo further said.

Panelo added that the Supreme Court’s decision upholds the validity of the President's move to withdraw from the international court, which is probing human rights abuses in the government’s bloody drug war.

“As the petitions, according to sources, were dismissed based on mootness (i.e., the withdrawal already took effect), the ruling  of the Supreme Court effectively upholds the validity and force of the withdrawal without the concurrence of the Senate,” the Palace official said.

The Supreme Court junked the petitions on the basis of mootness, saying that Duterte had already withdrawn the Philippines from the Rome Statute, the establishing treaty of the ICC, in 2019.

In March 2018, Duterte declared the country’s withdrawal from the ICC one month after ICC Office of the Prosecutor announced that it would look into the allegedly state-sanctioned killings in his campaign against illegal drugs. 

Six opposition senators filed a petition before the high court to challenge Duterte’s decision to back out from the ICC, citing that it is invalid because it lacked concurrence from the Senate. 

In mid-December 2020, a report from the ICC Office of the Prosecutor showed that there is reasonable basis to believe that crimes against humanity were committed in the Duterte administration’s anti-drugs campaign. — Consuelo Marquez/BM, GMA News