Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s lead legal counsel Nicholas Kaufman said on Friday that FPRRD’s landslide victory in the recently concluded 2025 National and Local Midterm Elections was “a finger in the eye to the people who brought him” to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.
Kaufman pointed out that the result of the May polls is a clear message of “protest votes” from the supporters of the former president.
FPRRD was officially proclaimed mayor of Davao City, securing a landslide victory with 662,630 votes against his opponent, Karlo Nograles, who garnered only 80,852 votes.
“Let me just come back once again to this whole issue of the elections. People missed the point. The former president won a landslide victory, so my concern is that it’s a finger in the eye to the people who threw him over here (The Hague). That’s the real point of the elections. It was a protest vote,” Kaufman told the media and supporters outside the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands.
Kaufman added that preparations for FPRRD’s oath-taking are being handled by the former president’s Filipino lawyers.
Meanwhile, Kaufman explained that there are pre-conditions that have to be met for an individual to be released by the ICC.
“It’s not like one of the criminal cases that you can just post bail, get out and go home,” he said.
He stressed that for someone to be released by the ICC, there has to be a willing State Party capable of receiving him onto its territory.
“It’s a long process. It requires a certain degree of diplomacy,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman stated that the Philippine government, specifically President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. himself, should request the ICC to return FPRRD to the country.
The former president has been held at the ICC detention facility for 74 days already since his arrest on March 11, 2025.
