The bright side

It's a new year, so let's look on the bright side of what happened in 2025.

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

Filipinos showed renewed capacity for outrage over wrongdoing. We're expecting the angry mood, which took a break during the holiday season, to be revived in the first quarter and to be sustained.

The sorry excuse for an ombudsman finally retired, with his fat retirement benefits intact. Public health workers and teachers, chronically underpaid, may want to check that out.

For the first time (in what for the DDS would be the dark side), relatives of the thousands killed in the bloody war on drugs waged by Rodrigo Duterte can hope for justice, following his turnover to the Interpol and subsequently to the International Criminal Court.

His chief implementer of Oplan Tokhang, Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, spent Christmas in hiding from an unconfirmed arrest warrant from the ICC.

Dela Rosa and another key player in the war on drugs are expected to face arrest on the same charges that landed Duterte in ICC detention in The Hague: murder as a crime against humanity.

The Philippines has a law covering such an offense, but it was never applied to Duterte and his enforcers, thus providing reason for the ICC to step in.

Unfortunately for the Marcos administration, it was unable to follow through with proper messaging on Duterte's arrest, which should have focused on justice for human rights abuses. Maybe the administration was preoccupied with its messy attempt to get Vice President Sara Duterte ousted in an impeachment trial - something that Chiz Escudero wouldn't be rushed into spearheading.