Marcos fends off people power calls: 鈥楪ov鈥檛 is just doing its job鈥�
MANILA, Philippines — “The government is just doing its job.”
This was the reaction of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to supposed calls for Power Power after former President Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest on Tuesday.
The former president is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity he allegedly committed during his administration’s bloody drug war.
“Well, you know…again, the government is just doing its job,” Marcos said in a presidential address later that day.
“It’s not because it’s one person or another that we do the things that we do,” he continued.
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Marcos even subtly hinted, “Maybe sa…noong mga nakaraan na mga administrasyon, baka ganoon ang ginagawa. Pero para sa akin, hindi naman ganoon.”
(Maybe in past administrations, that’s how things were done. But for me, it’s not like that.)
The president further explained that the government is merely obeying laws as a member of a community of nations.
“We must live up to our responsibilities to the commitments that we have made to the community of nations,” he said.
“And that is what has happened here. Politics doesn’t enter into it. Bakit—why—he’s never going to be a candidate for anything. Why go after him? Right? And it was in 2017, I was just a civilian then,” Marcos said.
In the same briefing, Marcos confirmed that the chartered plane carrying Duterte took off for The Hague in the Netherlands, at 11:03 p.m.
The ICC is headquartered in The Hague.
The drug war claimed at least 6,000 lives, according to official government data. However, human rights watchdogs and the ICC estimated the death toll from the drug war to be much higher—between 12,000 and 30,000 from 2016 to 2019. They said several of the cases are extrajudicial killings.
