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All right. Good morning, Atty. Ruben Carranza, my other favorite letter R among my guests.

Good morning.

Good morning. Well, there's a lot to discuss. I mean, obviously, the context of our conversation

has to do with your expertise as an international humanitarian law expert. I think we have discussed

the Middle East, what's going on in the Middle East, also in our previous episodes, although

of course, the reality is even more stark and poignant. But before that, Atty. Carranza,

let's be a little bit parochial. Let me be a little bit selfish and let's be more,

let's focus on something Filipino for a while before we go to the more international aspect,

which still is relevant to us. First of all, anong basa mo dito sa progression of the whole

confidential funds saga? Particularly, it looks like there's a lot of backlash and there's also

a lot of, I don't know, housecleaning, if I can look at it, or recalibration even by the powers

that be, except it's at the expense of one faction of the ruling elite, rather than the

entire faction of the ruling elite. How are you looking at this entire drama, Atty. Carranza?

Well, let's take up the question of so-called confidential funds first, regardless of who's

claiming it, who's denying it, who wants it and who claims not to want it.

I've always thought of confidential funds as just an excuse for corruption in the Philippines.

Remember, I used to work in government. So, I worked in two government agencies that,

under our conventional understanding of confidential funds, or sometimes they're

called intelligence funds, or all kinds of names, we would have been entitled to them. I was

Assistant Secretary of the Department of National Defense. I was Commissioner in the PCGG.

You could argue that these are kinds of agencies that need those funds. But then there's a counter

argument, which is that these agencies should have funds, regular funds to do their work,

which means they don't have to be confidential. You might have to perhaps argue that they don't

have to follow very strict auditing rules, that they don't have to disclose it to everyone,

but only to the Commission on Audit. But you don't have to make it so that it's absolutely

secret without any kind of transparency whatsoever, and that a post-audit will just

confirm what they spent, which is foolish because then they've already spent it.

So, I've always thought that this is an excuse for corruption. So, when I was in the PCGG,

Chairperson Heidi Ora simply refused to include any type of confidential or intelligence funds

in our budget. If we needed to spend something, it would be in our budget. If we needed to travel,

if we needed to hire lawyers, it would just be in the budget. In the DND, that was more difficult

because you have the military, which is flush with all kinds of these funds. But I already saw

that in that position, that this was also used for waste, if not outright corruption.

So, to me, I think the larger policy debate here is whether there should be confidential funds in

the first place for anyone. I'm sure there will be arguments that certain agencies and certain

types of expense should not be so transparent. But like I said earlier, you can have an audit

system to deal with that, but not a system where it's simply just given to you as a lump sum,

you spend it the way you want, and then you just account for it at the end when it's too late.

So, that's the policy argument. Now, the political argument, your question of

what is going on behind the scenes, basically. I'm sure your insights are far better than mine

here, but let me just specify something. I think every Filipino who pays attention

already knows this is a Marcos-Duterte fight. And that's the tragedy because Filipinos are

victims of both Marcos and Duterte. And so, why would you pick one side over the other?

Why would you think that Marcos is a more honest person than Duterte? Why would you think that

Duterte deserves to be believed against Marcos? These are just people fighting for spoils.

These are people fighting for who gets to steal more and who gets to kill more. And that's the

tragedy of this debate. And you can see that playing out in the media coverage of newspapers

that are owned by the Marcos Romualdez family. Why is the Inquirer, for example,

covering it in a way that it wouldn't cover Martin Romualdez donating $2 million? At first,

everyone thought it was just $1 million. The Tagalog Language Program, it turns out to be $2

million. And I was interviewed for that, and the article came out at first, and then they took it

down. So, you can see here that this is more than just about transparency and accountability

for confidential funds. It's Marcos against Duterte fighting for control over the spoils

of government. Or more like Marcos via Romualdez. Because if you look at BBM himself, he tries to be

above the fray. And I think that's a plausible deniability is very important. But before going

to that bardagulan and the whole tambaluslos one, let me rewind a little bit. Exactly.

That's the reason why I wanted to ask you, Attorney Carranza, is because you serve in the

Department of National Defense, which is national defense, right? All of these things we're hearing

from Duterte about defense. Well, that is your job when you're in the Department of National Defense.

But you're also with PCGG, which had to do with good governance. So, the question basically here,

Attorney Carranza, is, I know you're categorically skeptical, to just put it nicely.

But for the sake of argument, under what circumstances can a confidential fund make

sense? So, for instance, we had Secretary Llamas as a guest, and he talked about how Pinoy as the

president, they had, you know, quite minimal compared to what comes later on under Duterte.

But nonetheless, the president had a confidential fund. And then what are the safeguards? Or what

is the golden mean? Like a while ago, you said something like, it doesn't have to be confidential

fund. But, you know, it can be somewhere like you can just report to the Commission of Edit.

Because if you give too much details, then if it's a national security relevant one,

then the enemy knows what you're doing. For example, you cannot say we're buying 10 AK-47

or 10 ISR. I mean, so obviously, there is an argument to make. But what's the golden mean?

And what are the circumstances under which you think confidential fund makes sense? Because

under the Aquino administration, the president has confidential fund,

although nothing close to what will come later on under Duterte or BBM.

It's both a cultural and a legal issue. Legally, you do have an argument for not disclosing

how you will spend certain line items in your budget, because they're confidential,

because they're intelligence funds. And you can have a rule legally, where you only allow

certain agencies rather than certain activities, right? Agencies, not activities, who have access

to these types of funds. So that narrows it down considerably. You can have National Defense,

you can have the PCGG, you can have National Intelligence Agencies, the National Bureau

of Investigation. But I wouldn't stop there legally, because within that group of agencies,

you still have to narrow exactly why they will spend this money for what. And that's where

the trouble is. Because even within those agencies, there's a lot of corruption. Even

within these agencies, there's a lot of non-accounting of how this money is spent.

They would usually say reward money, they would say money for confidential informants,

money for whistleblowers. Then call it that, right? Put it in the budget as money for whistleblowers

or money for confidential informants. Obviously, you don't have to detail who the confidential

informants are. There's a witness protection program, for example, in the Department of

Justice. That's allocated as a line item in the Department of Justice budget for witness

protection. Do you need to specify the witnesses you protect? No. So in other words, you do have

a civilian example of what these military and police agencies ought to do when they want access

to these types of funds. But on the cultural side, that's a problem. This always comes down

to power. These people think that dispensing power requires access to corruption. That's

really what it is. Obviously, you cannot put a budget line for corruption. So you call it

something else, confidential funds. And if you ask what's going on, well, it's confidential,

right? You just look at it that way. No, it's a tautology. So it's ridiculous. I know.

Right. Just for technicality purposes, what's the difference with the maintenance and other

expenses, the MOE? Because for example, they did this. It's not confidential anymore in the

DepEd. We'll just put it in the MOE. What's going on there? Well, in government accounting,

that should have been very basic, right? Maintenance of your facilities, of what you

do day-to-day. So everything you usually do and other expenses. And that already covers salaries.

That covers gasoline. That covers things that make you function. That's the spying part of your

regular activity. Now, that's where the arguments you already know come in, right? Why would the

Department of Education need money to spy on people? Then maybe you're not educating, you're

spying. So I think that's the difference. And when politicians get away with stretching this

concept of what a line item in a budget is for, it's meant for this, but not for that, you might

as well get rid of the budgeting process. You might as well not have any of these distinctions

because you might as well not have a commission on audit and just leave it to congressmen and

senators to decide how much will be stolen from corruption, for corruption, and how much will be

left to spend on the public. Atty. Carranza, are you, I don't know if the word impresses right,

but are you surprised that the commission on audit, regardless of changes in leadership,

we can debate about whether the right persons are now there, et cetera, that in fairness,

it looks like pretty consistent in, well, indirectly exposing some gaps, loopholes,

if not anomalous practices out there. And at the same time, you also have the office of ombudsman

coming out now and essentially telling them, hey, to back off, something along those lines.

And then you have also people, I don't know, Congressman Richard Gomez, something like,

huwag niyong masyadong i-publicize para hindi mapaya yung ibang tao. May mga ganon. So parang,

what's going on here? First of all, are you surprised that the audit folks have not been

neutered? Or is this just like performative transparency? And then that's really it?

Because you can be cynical and say, of course, this is part of the performativity. Si may

commission on audit naman, inexposed naman. So we're a democracy, right? You know what I'm

saying? Like there could be levels of cynicism there, but for ombudsman to come in and all,

is this a next level kind of thing going on because we have a Duterte and BBM in power or not?

Yeah. And that's actually the right starting point to answer you because

once a country elects a family that stole five to $10 billion from them,

there is no bar anymore to outrightly defending corruption. So when the ombudsman of the

Philippines, who's supposed to be a constitutional office that checks every single branch of the

government, even to some extent, the Supreme Court comes out and says, we don't have to

publish the statement of assets and liabilities of public officials. It's essentially saying,

they can commit corruption in secret. We don't have to show how much they earned from corruption.

And that's because when you're a country that elects the Marcoses, puts them back in power

after they stole billions from you and lie about it, then there is nothing that stops

people like an ombudsman who got appointed by Duterte. There's nothing that prevents

corrupt politicians from coming out now and saying, we don't have to be checked. We don't have to be

required to disclose our income. We don't have to be exposed to public scrutiny

because what? You're not public officials. That's the problem. The commission of audit

functions because you have a bureaucracy in place. And to that extent, that's the value of

having a civil service that isn't affected by political change to a large extent. But as we

know, the civil service commission as an example, it's fine from a certain salary grade

downward. The problem will be in appointing higher level officials. The same thing with

the commission of audit. They audit mayor's offices. They audit fire departments. And then

you find out that the fire department bought a truck secondhand, but describe it as firsthand

and everyone goes to jail for that. You find a market, a city market treasurer

absconding with money, and she goes to jail for that, but not Imelda Marcos,

who stole 500 times more than anyone else in the Philippines. So did the commission on audit play

a role in checking her? Of course not, because the commission on audit was headed by someone

close to Ferdinand Marcos during the dictatorship. When Chofisto Gingona,

senior, became commission on audit chair right after the dictatorship, there was an audit of

all the Marcos debts and all the foreign aid that was sent to the dictatorship. And that's

when they found out that the Marcos dictatorship, for example, used USAID money for Imelda Marcos

shopping. So while we think the commission on audit does its job and these are bureaucrats

and civil servants who are professionals who follow certain standards, that's fine.

But I think we need to have them do more than what they're used to doing with regular government

agencies, with government agencies that have little money and therefore little corruption

and therefore not much to check. I saw some, I don't know, was it authentic or not,

may nag-circulate online as some sort of a Malacanang document now, intelligence or

confidential fund for Imelda or something like that. I mean, can we talk about the genesis of

this whole practice? Is this an Imeldafic Marcos legacy thing, or is this something common among

developing countries and we just copy it from someone else? How original is this whole

confidential fund saga? Dictators everywhere, not just the Philippine dictator, have always,

for some perverse reason, tried to find legal excuses for their corruption. Why they do that,

I think, has to do more with outward appearance towards people other than their citizens

than to their citizens. Other dictators commit corruption. Augusto Pinochet was corrupt.

The Argentine Junta was corrupt. South Korea's Chun Doo-hwan and the other dictators that followed

him were all corrupt. They were also brutal, but they were talking about corruption. It's not

exclusive to a Filipino dictator. What is exclusive is the fact that we re-elected the

same people who stole from us. Augusto Fujimori of Peru was corrupt, right? Augusto Fujimori was

corrupt, Peruvian dictator. He was ousted. His daughter tried to run for president. She lost.

Three times she ran? How many times? I've lost count.

You do have this daughter of one of the former dictators of Korea running and actually winning,

and then exposed for corruption and forced to resign. That document, maybe we're talking about,

I don't know, this memo that tells the Philippine National Bank to give Imelda Marcos her shopping

money when she arrives. There's a PNB branch here in New York. That's the same branch that gave

her money, and then they take it out of the so-called intelligence fund, which is just

rigmarole because what's the point? You're a dictator. It's just PNB, like I said, trying to

show to its foreign banking partners that there has to be some way to justify what is going on,

but really, internally within the dictatorship, they couldn't care. Imelda Marcos, for instance,

converted part of the National Food Authority's money into an intelligence fund, stole from the

NFA, the same agency that is now in charge of trying to lower the price of rice in the Philippines.

So kahit yung ahensya na nagpapatakbo ng pagkain at presyo ng bigas sa Pilipinas,

dinakawan ng mga Marcos. In fact, the Sandigan Bayan ordered them to pay what was found,

only what was found lost, 10 million pesos. Sa gagayon, hindi pa binabayaran ni Imelda Marcos.

So ginawang intelligence fund ang pera para pambilin ng bigas.

The reason I ask this is because doon sa isang podcast ko with Leloy Claudio, of course, we go

history, right? We talk about all sorts of securities of the Philippines. One of the things

that we discussed was how actually the term crony capitalism is perhaps a Philippine invention.

Way before talking about the Russian oligarchs and all of that, na-inventan ng Pilipinas. Kaya in

that context, I ask you the question if this intelligence confidential fund tradition,

if I can put it, if this is another only in the Philippines or authentic contribution natin to

humanity, that's why I ask about it, no? But I have another question, Tony Carranza.

Of course, there's the aspect of, to put it mildly, performative transparency or rule of law,

right? Because you want to show to the world, oh no, we operate by rule of law. And that's what

makes modern dictators. I mean, old despots didn't give a heck. They would just massacre

half of the villages and they'll say, you're my subjects. The difference with the modern

dictator is that they pretend that there's institution going on there. But the other

thing I've noticed, especially since the Duterte is coming to power is what we call securitization,

right? This idea that you try to shut down any kind of rational evidence-based debate by saying,

no, no, no, this is a matter of national security. So no question in confidential fund,

and later on, this will be relevant as we discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

because actually the context of the term securitization starts with how things

disoperate in countries like Israel, for instance, under certain right-wing administrations.

But speaking of the Philippines, we see with Duterte, if you question, for instance,

Sara Duterte, right? When she questioned her confidential fund, she immediately goes to an

event with some police folks and says, the ones who questioned the confidential fund,

effectively they are the enemy of the country. It's not even like defending herself on good

governance ground. It's immediately pushing it back to you, and not only gaslighting,

it's something even more menacing for some people. Is this something new in your opinion,

or don't you think this makes Duterte a bit different from our current version of Marcos?

Because at least in the case of Marcos Jr., you don't see him doing that securitization thing,

right? Well, with Duterte, that's quite consistent from the father to the daughter.

I think when you've stolen five to ten billion dollars already,

there's really no need for you.

Yeah, to some extent, yes. But also to the extent that you've done it with

over 20 years, and you needed 20 years to do it, and you needed 20 years of brutal dictatorship to

do it, you probably think that it's enough of a lesson for you to find another way to commit

corruption without having to go through the brutality of it. And not because you don't

want to be brutal, but because it takes too long. And with the internet, with social media,

with so much transparency available, it's not going to be something that you could do the way

you did it 20, 36 years. It's just some learning curve here, like strategic learning, kind of like

game theory. Right, right. And for the Dutertes, that's why they had to kill so many people

when they were in Davao, when Duterte was president, because they only had a short time

to do the kind of brutality that they could do nationwide. And in some ways, you might be

tempted to think, is this a distinction between a sophisticated set of oligarchs versus a very

crude set of oligarchs? I think the term we use is old new rich versus new new rich.

Right, and then to an extent, maybe that's true as far as their appeal,

that their populist appeal is concerned. One is totally honest about the murder

he wants to commit and has been committing. The other relies on lying to deny the corruption

that they commit. So, which one do you want? A brutal murderer or a dishonest plunderer?

That's your choice, right? Are you on the side of the liar who steals,

or are you on the side of the non-liar who kills people? What kind of choice is that?

I'm on the side of the party boy, Grand Prix, Formula One.

Right, except that now, as you suggested before we started,

this dishonest plunderer will create a fund so that they can consolidate all their corruption

and they can steal not in retail terms, not one by one from the NFA,

I will steal from my province, I will steal from the Ministry of Agriculture.

Instead, I will just steal the biggest assets being held by my largest financial institutions,

my central bank, my government-owned bank, and call it something that honors my plunderer father,

I'll call it Maharlika Fund. So, you have a plundering family that has mastered

plunder and is now carrying it out. On the other hand, you have a crude murdering family

that is still trying to make sure it consolidates power, but has already

left a trail of blood and bodies, and is trying to transcend that legacy.

It's a terrible set of choices, and there are no good choices in it. I think if you were

presenting yourself as an alternative to these two sets of terrible choices, you'll have to

address both corruption and human rights violations and say, there has to be

something better than just choosing between a corrupt family and a violent family.

Attorney Carranza, since you're in the United States, let me ask you this question.

I'm getting a lot of people asking me, especially from abroad, especially those who are

beginning to turn against BBM because he's perceived to be not pro-China, right? So, you can

guess who are these people. They're saying, oh, these Americans, they may have

offered something to the Marcoses, and that's why Marcos is so nice to them. I mean, how much

do you think is there to that? Because it's not like Biden controls the courts, right? I mean,

Marcoses have pending court cases, to put it mildly, right? It's not like Biden can tell

these courts what to do, right? But does the Treasury Department, for instance, have some

leeway in terms of dealing with alleged funds parked in, I don't know, Caribbean or something

like that? Assuming this conspiracy theory is true, I mean, how much leeway does the Biden

administration or any American president have to supposedly hook in the Marcos? Because that's

the argument that many pro-China people are saying that, oh, Marcos was our boy, except

Americans offered them a nicer deal. And they say, I don't know about that. And of course, for me,

it's ironic. Oh, you didn't have any issues when there were all those pogo and questionable things

under the table. Now, you're concerned about corruption in the Philippines. But I want to

ask you, honestly, realistically, what can Biden really offer if he were to be completely real

politic about this because he cares about China containing China? Therefore, let's give Marcos

whatever he wants. Assuming that's the case, theoretically, what is the leeway there?

Two years ago, in the middle of summer and the pandemic, I was asked to testify by the

Department of Justice here in a case against the Marcoses or involving stolen Marcos assets

still being litigated in New York. And the Department of Justice was very serious in

supporting the Philippine claim to those assets. In other words, this was an offshoot

of the Aquino administration, Benigno Aquino administration, claiming these assets. These are

paintings that were stolen by Ferro, Vilma Bautista, Imelda's aide from the New York

properties of the Philippines, and then hidden for a long, long time. And they came out and they

were taken back by the Department of Justice. And I helped them in that measure as well many

years ago. So they finally asked me to testify and say, where did these assets come from?

Did the Philippines know that these paintings were being hidden? And I testified on that.

But the point I'm making here is that the Department of Justice does what it has to do

when it comes to pursuing Marcos assets, when it comes to supporting Philippine government claims

against the Marcoses. Because it's a professional bureaucracy. They, to a very

large extent, they're insulated from changes in administration. And not that there is no way

to corrupt that process, not that there is no way to undermine that process. There's constant

undermining of that process, not just under Trump, but even presidents before him. But the

difficulty here is that you have other interests trying to make sure that the Department of Justice

does not lean on one side or the other, because everyone has an agenda. And so in the end,

everybody with an agenda has to arrive at a consensus and a compromise of sorts that maybe

let's let the DOJ do its job. I'm saying that because that doesn't mean that there are other,

that there are no other ways to give Marcos what he wants in return for what the United States

wants from Marcos. And I'll give you an example. You mentioned the US Bureau of Treasury, which

among other agencies in the US, administers sanctions and freezing of assets based on

various laws that more or less allow the United States government to freeze assets to prevent

travel by refusing US visas, or even to order the arrest, if they appear on US soil,

of persons who are not just convicted, but even just suspected of corruption or human rights

violations. And the Filipinos know one example of that, Kiboloy, son of God, or whatever he

claims to be. He's not just under FBI investigation, he's subject to these

sanctions. One of the more prominent examples is the Global Magnitsky Act sanctions for corrupt

officials, for human rights violators. The United States government doesn't impose sanctions,

freeze assets, prevent travel based on some objective, applicable to everyone criteria.

They use these tools of accountability to promote their power, to pursue their

foreign policy interests, to support America's military might elsewhere.

There's a strategic prerogative.

Yeah, so there's a strategic prerogative, yeah.

And the fact that they haven't used this on Marcos, and to some extent did not use this

on Duterte himself, but on certain individuals around Duterte, under pressure from the US

Congress, by the way, shows you that the US, by not doing anything against the Marcos family,

when they could have, when there is legal basis to do so, is giving Marcos what he wants.

Thank you for clarifying that. Exactly. Because my argument is, for all the ills of American

democracy, their courts are not banana republic courts. They have their own logic. And in

fairness, we saw even under the Trump administration, despite tremendous amount of

pressure he tried to put on many agencies, there was a fight back, there was a resistance.

I think the term was the steady state, right? Remember that anonymously written NYTBs?

Now, of course, we're not exaggerating the healthiness of American state institutions,

but this is not the Philippines, just to put it mildly. This is not a banana republic, all right?

But as I said, my sense is if there is a place where there could be prerogative or

room for maneuver is the Treasury Department's enforcement or pursuit, right, of certain

questionable personalities or individuals and all. Because the reason I know that is because,

for instance, we know that the Department of Treasury in the US has tremendous amount of

leeway on how to strongly go against American rivals, whether it's China, whether it's Russia,

whether it's Iran, for instance, for instance, on tech transfers, on oil transfers. So clearly,

there's a lot of room for maneuver and prerogative there, right? So I just had to

clarify that this is not a case of Biden telling courts to drop anti-Marcos cases.

He can't because those decisions are already final. So as far as those cases are concerned,

all he could do, which he did, was to allow Marcos Jr. and Aimee Marcos to visit the United

States. That's why, all of a sudden, how was it that Aimee Marcos never went to Hawaii?

You don't see pictures of her in Hawaii because she couldn't go. She would have been arrested.

She fled to Morocco, got a passport there. How is it that Bongbong Marcos, the last time he was

in Hawaii was 1995, if I'm not mistaken, never went back because that time, he was allowed by

the U.S. District Court in Hawaii to visit. At that time, there was no contempt judgment yet

against the family. So he was allowed to visit, provided he would testify, and he did.

So these people suddenly have an itch to travel to the United States. Why? Because

the Biden administration allowed immunity, temporary, temporary for as long as they're

in power, to be given to them. Once they're out of power, the U.S. courts can absolutely

enforce their judgments against this family. Wait, the sovereign immunity also applies to Aimee?

No, these are all, in the case of Aimee Marcos, let's go technical here,

she is not part of the contempt judgment in the District Court of Hawaii. Why? Because it's only

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Imelda Marcos who were held in contempt because they're administrators

of the so-called assets of Marcos Sr. Yeah, I have to clarify that because sovereign immunity,

you're talking about president, head of state, right? Some people are not even head of state.

Now, it perfectly makes sense. Thank you for that. Now, and I think this is a perfect transition

to what we really want to talk about. Let's talk about Duterte and then let's go to his pals on

the other side, right? ICC. So, what is your sense with ICC so far since last time we talked

vis-a-vis Duterte? And I think that's also a segue for our next part of conversation,

because Duterte had his own ideas about how to deal with the Gaza situation, right? With his

friend on the other side, who right now is also coming under a lot of criticism and people are

also talking about war crimes being committed. But let's talk about Duterte first before we

transition to the very thorny issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. How is the ICC

situation in your opinion? You know, the ICC prosecutor has won the appeal against the

original decision by the prosecutor to open an investigation, right? So, that was challenged by

the Philippine government under Marcos Junior. So, there are obviously still political

compromises and negotiations between the Marcos and Duterte families going on back there. But at

the ICC, that doesn't matter. So, the investigation has been approved. Technically, what should

happen now is for the prosecutor to file the charges at the trial chambers and ask

that chamber to issue either a warrant or summons to whoever he says should be

summoned or issued a warrant for. That hasn't happened. And largely, the reason that that

hasn't happened is, well, two reasons actually. Resources. The prosecutor does not have

enough resources to spread around, but that isn't really, well, that in part is the fault

of the prosecutor and also the states that are members of the ICC in terms of funding. But also

because this particular prosecutor has been a prosecutor that wants to please Western governments,

opens an investigation into Ukraine, but refuses to act on a two-year-old investigation

in Palestine. So, if you want to segue there later, we can segue there.

That is more poignant now than ever, right? Yeah.

Right. And there's a second reason why the Duterte case has not moved forward. They can move it

forward. They can issue warrants of arrest, but they can't force Duterte or anyone who might be

charged in the Philippine situation to appear at the Hague in the so-called confirmation of

charges hearing. But even before you get to that, there are other possible openings for litigating

this case, the Philippine government, and later on Duterte could still challenge these charges.

So, there's a long way to go. And I think that Filipinos who are awaiting this, again, I always

say this, the ICC is not the only way to get justice for victims of the drug war. In the

Philippines, you can have justice for victims of the drug war by letting them tell the truth about

what happened to them, who these people are who were killed, that they were not drug addicts, or

even if they were, that they were entitled to human rights, not to be killed. Give them reparations

for what they suffered, for what they lost. These are very poor families. So, don't pin all your

hopes on the International Criminal Court. At the end of the day, justice is better when it's

done at home, because you can build a better home for justice. What you're saying is the

shadow of ICC being there is not the bad thing necessarily, but let's not rely on that. At the

end of the day, we have to push it in turn. So, that's an important point because I think that

was not as much fleshed out in the past. And I think every time you and I talk about ICC,

there's a lot of excitement and expectation, and I'm not sure it really captures the essence

of the struggle at hand here. So, thank you very much for emphasizing that. Now, let's go to this

issue. It's a heavy