Bato hits rock bottom
The noose is tightening around Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa.
By a decisive 9-5-1 vote, the Supreme Court rejected on Wednesday his desperate plea for a temporary restraining order to stop his arrest on the strength of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.
The other shoe dropped on Thursday, when Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida issued orders to begin the hunt for Dela Rosa. Now caught between a rock and a hard place, the senator faces a widening pursuit amid the swift collapse of his political shields. He has chosen to keep well out of sight while his protectors keep a low profile.
While its ruling addressed only immediate interim relief, the high court’s message to the executive branch was unequivocal: Stop hedging and arrest Dela Rosa.
This is a welcome, if delayed, development, following the senator’s recent antics that have made a mockery of a legislature unfortunate to count him as a member, and the law enforcement apparatus he once notoriously led.
A bizarre sight
After a monthslong vanishing act, Dela Rosa materialized at the Senate just long enough to cast a vote in the May 13 leadership shakeup, triggering an armed standoff within the chamber. Gunshots echoed through the Senate corridors as National Bureau of Investigation agents secured the exits, culminating in Dela Rosa sneaking out under the cover of dawn.
To those who once feared him, it was a bizarre sight to watch the chief architect of the Duterte administration’s flagship drug campaign turn into a sniveling runaway from justice.
What a reversal of fortune, indeed, for the man who touted a bloodthirsty philosophy during the drug war: “If someone fights back, they’ll die. If nobody fights back, we’ll make them fight back. Produce blood. Instill fear.”
That chilling Dela Rosa quote was the prefatory statement in the Office of the Solicitor General’s (OSG) devastating 74-page comment on Dela Rosa’s petitions before the Supreme Court.
The OSG, led by Solicitor General Darlene Berberabe, had dissected Dela Rosa’s pleadings with surgical precision as it branded him a “fugitive from justice.” “Since a fugitive from justice has demonstrated disrespect for legal processes, he or she has no right to call upon the courts and the judicial system to adjudicate any of his or her claims,” it said.
The rebuttal of Dela Rosa’s counsel, Israelito Torreon, was rich in audacity but poor in logic, positing that his client had not fled the country, had attended sessions, and had even given media interviews.
Never mind that the same client is now nowhere to be found.
The forgotten law
The legal bedrock for Dela Rosa’s immediate arrest without a local court order already exists, as brilliantly illuminated by sociologist and Inquirer columnist Randy David.
In his May 17 column, David wrote how senators seemed to have forgotten Republic Act No. 9851, or the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity, enacted in 2009. The same law was invoked by the OSG in its own filing.
RA 9851 predates the nation’s ICC membership by two years; thus, its validity as a domestic law is entirely unaffected by then President Rodrigo Duterte’s petulant withdrawal from the Rome Statute in 2019. The law explicitly states that Philippine authorities may dispense with prosecution and instead “surrender or extradite suspected or accused persons … to the appropriate international court.”
Yet, as David noted, the loudest defenders of Dela Rosa, among them Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Loren Legarda, and Francis Escudero, were the same legislators who authored and voted for RA 9851. In other words, they built the gallows from which they are now trying in vain to extricate their colleague.
Show political will
As the hunt for Dela Rosa progresses, President Marcos must assert his political will by ensuring that the search is conducted with haste and conviction. He must crack the whip on Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla, whose track record in arresting wanted persons remains an embarrassing pimple on the administration.
The Supreme Court must rule on Dela Rosa’s main petition with dispatch. If it drags its feet, the case might well be rendered moot, allowing Dela Rosa to duplicate Duterte’s evasion tactics before his arrest in March last year.
Resolving this quickly likewise means cementing the legal groundwork for future enforcement actions. Let’s not forget that another sitting senator is deeply implicated in the drug war.
As he hits rock bottom, Dela Rosa’s only recourse is to come out of hiding, for the high court has signaled that the law applies even to those who think themselves above it. If he truly believes in the necessity of the brutal campaign he waged on Duterte’s orders, he should embrace every chance to defend it.
The so-called co-perpetrators of the drug war can’t hide from their own shadows forever. It’s time to reunite this sidekick with his boss in The Hague.
