ICC trust crisis reflects deeper political rot

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Every few months, a fresh Duterte poll lands and the public argument quickly hardens into familiar camps.

But the more revealing fact in WR Numero’s latest analysis is not just that national support for the International Criminal Court’s actions fell from 59% in March 2024 to 32% in April 2025. It is also that opposition rose from 29% to 46%, while uncertainty climbed from 13% to more than 22%.

That last number deserves more attention because it points to something deeper than a simple swing in partisan loyalty.

A growing pool of undecided Filipinos suggests not only hesitation about the ICC case itself, but also a wider erosion of confidence in the institutions and political actors surrounding it. That kind of uncertainty is dangerous because it creates space for cynicism.

When people stop believing that justice is steady and principled, they begin to see every legal process as another episode in a feud among the powerful and that is what makes Gen Z’s numbers worth reading carefully.

The decline in support among younger Filipinos does not necessarily mean they have embraced Rodrigo Duterte or forgotten the bloodshed of the drug war. It may instead show their discomfort with the politics wrapped around the case.

Support among young Filipinos for Duterte remaining under ICC custody fell from 60% to 50% between April and November 2025. That is still a decline, but it also suggests that many young Filipinos are not rejecting accountability outright.

What they may be rejecting is the appearance of selective outrage and that impression did not come from nowhere.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in January 2024 that his government would not cooperate with the ICC.

Then, as the Marcos-Duterte alliance collapsed and the former president became a more serious political liability, the administration’s posture shifted.

Whether that shift was legally justified is one question. How it looked to the public is another. And in politics, appearance matters.

Once justice begins to look timed to political convenience, even a legitimate process can lose moral force in the public mind.

That is the real damage of elite conflict. It does not only divide ruling families but also contaminates public faith in the institutions that are supposed to stand above them.

The class divide inside Gen Z makes this picture even more revealing.

Higher-income young respondents were more supportive of keeping Duterte in The Hague, while lower-income respondents were more doubtful.

The gap should not be brushed aside as it suggests that what appears to be a debate about international law is also shaped by inequality, lived insecurity, and long-standing distrust of institutions that many poorer Filipinos have rarely experienced as fair, accessible, or protective.

For people who feel abandoned by the state in daily life, appeals to justice from distant institutions may not carry the same weight as they do for the educated and economically secure.

But this is no excuse for indifference to drug war abuses. But it does explain why the language of accountability cannot be separated from the social realities in which people judge it.

The danger now is that the ICC case will be viewed less as a test of justice and more as a weapon in a dynastic struggle. If that happens, the country will lose more than support for one proceeding. It will lose another piece of its belief that law can still operate above faction, revenge, and convenience.

The task, then, is not simply to defend or oppose the ICC. It is to insist that accountability must look consistent, principled, and credible to ordinary Filipinos, not just to political camps and legal experts.

If support for justice is narrowing, the country should worry less about the noise of personalities and more about the deeper rot those numbers are beginning to expose.