Welcome Putin, and whoever is displeased can take a hike

Inexplicably, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government is skittishly and feverishly trying to find a way to deal with the decision by the (wrongly named) International Criminal Court to charge Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for “war crimes”.

Firstly, there’s nothing international about this court.

Has anyone in the west ever been charged?

Who in the West or even in Israel has ever been charged by this Court for war crimes which have been committed on numerous occasions by governments of these regions?

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Not one. US and Israeli government leaders have repeatedly derided any noise about bringing any of their accused citizens to The Hague for trial.

In fact they don’t even recognise its authority over any of their atrocities, and these are too numerous to cite.

Double standards mean no standards

Yet, US President Joe Biden congratulated the ICC for charging Putin. Double standards actually mean no standards at all.

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Can our timid president emulate the US or Israeli leaders in dismissing the ICC’s futile nonsense about Putin? Of course not.

He cannot even copy the presidents of the Philippines when they rejected the Hague nonsense.

Manila cut ties with the ICC when it tried to investigate President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war policies.

He withdrew the Philippines from the ICC founding treaty in 2018. In 2021 he said that he was willing to face trial in Manila but he was unwilling to stand before the “animals of the ICC” at The Hague.

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When the US urged him to cooperate with this Euro-American Criminal Court or else Washington would have him prosecuted, Duterte told the US to get lost; after all it was not even a signatory to the Court.

His successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has just ended all involvement with the ICC.

And for decades the Philippines has been living on the largesse of the US given their massive military presence in the country but was, and is, not cowered by this fact.

Ramaphosa should welcome Putin in August and tell whoever is displeased to take a hike.