The Politics of Pity

Why Melodrama is Not a Legal Defense

by Jo Chanco

EDITOR THINKS

In recent months, an unusual defense strategy has emerged from the camp of the Duterte Die Hard Supporters (often abbreviated as DDS): treat international criminal accountability as though it were a weekend episode of a primetime family drama. Instead of grappling with the legal fundamentals of international law, crimes against humanity, or the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the narrative has leaned toward tearful appeals, sentimental justifications, and an insistence that age, frailty, or good faith ought to substitute for legal arguments. Their emotional crescendo concludes in an absurd premise: magpakatino naman daw ang ICC because the accused are elderly, supposedly harmless, and unlikely to abscond.

But sentimentality does not stand in for jurisprudence. Courts are not counseling centers; they are not charities; and the ICC certainly does not hand out consolation prizes for public relations losses. The mismatch between the melodrama of the supporters and the rational criteria used by the ICC illustrates not just a gap in legal comprehension, but a deeper phenomenon: the strategic use of pity to sanitize state violence and assert innocence without accountability.

I. Age and Fragility Are Not Legal Exemptions

At the heart of the sentimental defense is the argument of age. The reasoning seems straightforward: older individuals deserve gentler treatment. But international law does not operate under a senior citizens' discount system. Crimes against humanity, by definition, refer to acts that are systematic, large-scale, and committed with state machinery or political power. When a leader is perfectly capable of running a country, influencing agencies, deploying the armed forces, and shaping public discourse for years, their chronological age at the time of trial becomes irrelevant to the gravity of the offense.

The ICC evaluates technical factors: jurisdiction, gravity of crimes, chain of command, evidentiary structure, and the possibility of obstruction. Medical incapacity can be considered, but not as an escape hatch from trial. Age only matters when it directly prevents participation — and rallies, political endorsements, media statements, and mobilization efforts show that frailty is hardly incapacitating.

The argument of fragility collapses further under its own weight: if one is healthy enough to lead a mass of supporters, attend public functions, mobilize political blocs, or negotiate alliances, then one is healthy enough to sit in a courtroom and answer for decisions made in office.

II. The “Hindi Naman Tatakas” Narrative and the Myth of Good Faith

Another sentimental pillar of the defense insists that the accused will not flee. But international courts do not function on the basis of cross my heart assurances or trust exercises. Justice systems depend on observable behavior, historical patterns, and measurable risk — not on appeals to goodwill.

The ICC, like other international tribunals, examines:

• historical precedents of evasion

• availability of political networks and influence

• the capacity for flight or obstruction

• ability to manipulate institutions

• ability to mobilize crowds or loyal factions

• access to financial resources

Supporters forget that “not running away” is not the standard. The standard is whether the accused could run, or could derail legal processes. High-profile political figures have access to layers of protection, from security escorts to private wealth to foreign alliances. The world has witnessed this pattern repeatedly — dictators, generals, and presidents have fled their nations under far tighter scrutiny and with far fewer resources.

And in the Philippine context, historical precedent is even more telling: we have had presidents, cronies, warlords, and political clans who have successfully vanished, denied, delayed, and negotiated their way through judicial accountability. The ICC observes these patterns; the Philippine public has lived them.

III. The Supporters Themselves Become the Risk Factor

The irony is striking: the supporters arguing that there is “no risk” are themselves the risk. The same groups capable of staging motorcades, full-scale rallies, digital propaganda campaigns, and intimidation efforts are precisely what international courts flag as red flags for obstruction. If thousands of individuals can be mobilized to flood airports, block roads, drown media coverage, or harass institutions, then extradition and trial become logistically volatile.

International courts are not blind to political machinery. They have decades of experience dealing with warlords, populists, and authoritarian personalities. They understand how easily political movements can convert sympathy into disruption. In the calculus of risk, the ability to cause noise, chaos, or instability is part of the measurement. A faction claiming innocence cannot simultaneously keep a megaphone, a crowd, and a pressure apparatus without raising eyebrows.

There is a universal rule here: when the accused has the capacity to distort, influence, or destabilize the judicial process, detention is not punishment — it is a safeguard.

IV. The Simplification Trap: From Atrocity to Teleserye

Perhaps the most troubling dimension of the melodramatic defense is how it shrinks mass atrocity into digestible melodrama. Instead of grappling with state-sanctioned killings, the architecture of impunity, or the machinery that enabled the drug war’s brutality, supporters convert the discourse into a soap opera conflict between a misunderstood patriarch and an uncaring world.

This transformation is rhetorical, not accidental. By reframing structural violence as a sentimental narrative, atrocity becomes anecdote. Victims become irrelevant. Justice becomes negotiable. And the ICC becomes a caricatured villain — rigid, distant, unfeeling — simply because it insists on due process.

This tactic is not unique to the Philippine context. Authoritarian movements globally rely on emotional reduction to dilute accountability. Strongmen become father figures; victims become collateral; and courts become antagonists. The problem is that this rebranding works in local politics, where charisma can overpower criticism. But it collapses in international legal arenas, where facts and chains of command matter more than charisma and public tears.

Justice Is Not a Soap Opera

At the core of this entire spectacle lies a dissonance: justice belongs to the courtroom; melodrama belongs to television. International accountability is not suspended simply because the accused is elderly, unrepentant, or adored. The ICC is not designed to soothe political fandoms or assuage nostalgia for strongman rule. Its purpose is to examine whether state power orchestrated violence on a scale that violates humanity itself.

Sentimentality can win elections; it cannot absolve crimes against humanity.

Justice does not pause for age. And no one can credibly claim “no risk” when the loudest defenders are the very mechanisms of instability.

Or, to borrow the spirit of the line that inspired this discussion: the drama is for the screen; the justice is for the court.