Dispatch from Crame No. 274:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Statement on China's defense of Duterte's withdrawal from the ICC

4/4/18

Duterte is the greatest thing that ever happened to China's expansionism in the West Philippine Sea.

The President of the erstwhile independent Philippine Republic, which is now no different from a Chinese province under Duterte, has probably saved the Chinese government billions of yuans in national security, intelligence, and military spending after Duterte single-handedly turned over Philippine possession of the Spratlys, Scarborough Shoal, and even Benham Rise to China in a silver platter. The Chinese simply could not believe their luck in having such a lapdog as the President of their erstwhile bitter rival over WPS territories.

It is therefore not surprising that of all the countries in the world, only China has supported Duterte's withdrawal from the ICC, despite Harry Roque's hilarious claim that an "avalanche" of nations will support the Philippine withdrawal by also withdrawing from the ICC.

For China, Duterte is a godsend. It will do whatever it takes to keep Duterte in power, and this includes preventing an ICC warrant of arrest from ever touching him.

China is supporting Duterte against what it alleges as ICC politicization not because it believes in the Philippines' independence to craft its own policy against illegal drugs. If there is any country that has undermined Philippine sovereignty in the past several years, it is China.

China is supporting Duterte against the ICC for no other reason than because he is the closest China ever came to having a puppet in the Philippines. China is therefore only defending its puppet against his international accountability in the murder of 20,000 (and still counting) human beings in a fake drug war.

What is therefore hilarious about China's defense of Duterte's "independent" drug war policy is that China itself is not doing anything to stop the flow of drugs into the Philippines. If China is truly sincere in eradicating the drug problem in the Philippines, all it has to do is to stop the shipment of shabu from China to the Philippines, and hunt down the Chinese drug lords operating in the Philippines and seize their assets in China. But China is not doing that. Its drug lords continue to pour shabu into the Philippines, while its puppet Duterte wages his fake war on drugs by killing poor Filipinos.

We all know that early on, Duterte allied with China because he knows that human rights is never a consideration of China. It couldn't care less about human rights. All that Duterte had to do then to make himself indispensable to China was to be the puppet that China needed in the Philippines. And Duterte's bargain all worked out well for China. The least that China can therefore do for Duterte is to defend him against the ICC and protect him from international accountability for the mass murder of his own people.

Of course, China is doing all of this for itself, because without Duterte, it loses its puppet and ever reliable ally who just surrendered territories in the Spratlys. Aside from China, no other country in the world has any reason to support Duterte's withdrawal from the ICC, because only China has a billion yuan reason to do so.

As aptly put by a blogger, treason is the biggest sin, among many, of this President.