Marcos initially refused to co-operate with the ICC investigation, but as his relationship with the Duterte family deteriorated, he changed his stance.

Vice-President Duterte said her father's arrest amounted to "kidnapping", claiming it violated Philippine sovereignty. She left Manila for the Netherlands on Wednesday, according to her office.

That deterioration is puzzling, because Sarah's switch to becoming Marco's VP cemented his presidency, and the ICC case got revived in 2023 about 9 months before Sarah said she wanted to cut Marco's (BongBong) head off. Strangely, the split is attributed to different views about China and the US. Dutz was Pro China and then appeared to soften as all the promised infrastructure loans to Build, Build, Build fell apart. I was happy they fell apart so the Phils didn't take on prohibitive debt. And it wasn't clear which happened first.

Dutz learned. He thought he could talk to the militant Muslin side, and that didn't work. He released a bunch of NPA prisoners to get the NPA to the table and that didn't work. Then he got tough with the NPA and that did work - and it was just as you thought, NPA recruits in most cases were the poor jobless guys who got lured in by promises - Duterte didn't punish them if they surrendered, and helped them find jobs, get training.

On my island, Negros, the police pulled 12 socialist sugar cane worker organizers out of their houses and executed them. And the NPA gunned down six police in what looked like an ambush. But on our island the NPA were training recruits and some were from colleges - go figure.

Right now it looks like Marcos suckered Sarah, then turned on her with accusations of corruption - constant attacks. But why he would turn isn't clear - unless she was using the Chinese against him. The Chinese backed Duterte into the Presidency. Marcos thinks we're a more reliable ally than the Chinese. So the revival of the ICC case seems to be a way to lessen the Chinese influence by Duterte and his daughter. Puzzling, because before I left it seemed that Duterte had become disenchanted with China.