A disservice to the country
In May this year, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla challenged the entire Philippine National Police force, which is under his department’s supervision, to intensify its manhunt for high-profile fugitives. He didn’t single out PNP commanders alone; he addressed his exhortation to the 225,000-strong organization.
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) released a statement on May 11 recounting Remulla’s exact words: “Sabi ko, 200,000 kayo. Alangan namang ‘di n’yo kaya hanapin, tatlong tao lang. Galingan n’yo pa” (I told them that there are 200,000 of you. Surely you can find just three people. Do better).
The three people he was alluding to in his remarks were former Ako Bicol party list Rep. Zaldy Co, gaming tycoon Charlie “Atong” Ang, and former police officer Rafael Dumlao III, all of whom were on the run by the time. Co had reportedly fled to Europe when his name was entangled in the flood control scandal, specifically for his involvement in budget anomalies as former House appropriations chair.
Prize catches
Dumlao allegedly led the police team behind the grisly 2016 kidnapping and killing of South Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo. And Ang had fled a non-bailable arrest warrant issued against him in connection with the case of the missing “sabungeros” or cockfight gamers.
Remulla’s list of prize catches was in fact missing two others. Former Duterte spokesperson Harry Roque had been ordered arrested by the House quad committee in September 2024, but he managed to escape and later surfaced in Europe, where he purportedly applied for asylum.
An older case involved another fugitive—Gerald Bantag, who, since April 2023, has been a wanted man for the murder of broadcaster Percy Lapid. Remulla had inherited these cases, true—but it was now his task to apprehend them.
Strikingly, just days after the DILG released Remulla’s statement challenging the PNP, another name would be added to the “wanted” list: Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who for months had been a no-show at the Senate, fearing reports of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against him for his role in the Duterte drug war. But on the afternoon of May 11, he suddenly reappeared at the Senate to cast his vote that allowed Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano to wrest the Senate presidency from Sen. Vicente “Tito” Sotto III.
Farcical moments
The farcical moments that transpired from May 11 to May 13 would soon be immortalized by TV cameras: National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents attempting to arrest Dela Rosa at a Senate entrance; Dela Rosa wriggling away and stumbling up the stairs, NBI agents in pursuit, until he was beyond reach on the Senate floor; Remulla swaggering into view after an alleged shootout that had Cayetano bellowing on Facebook that “the Senate is under attack!”; Remulla and minority senators seen laughing and sharing a meal afterwards as if nothing had happened; and finally, Dela Rosa—by May 13 confirmed to be the subject of an unsealed ICC arrest warrant—seen on CCTV after midnight boarding a vehicle, along with Sen. Robin Padilla, that drove them out of the Senate grounds.
Remulla made no attempt to stop him, and Dela Rosa has not been seen since then. Two months ago, Remulla said the senator was being protected by armed groups in Mindanao, thus requiring delicate negotiations for his surrender to avoid any bloodbath. He has followed that up with an even starker warning: Taking Dela Rosa by force could be “worse than Marawi,” he said last week, referring to the brutal five-month siege of Marawi City in 2017. The possible body count in this case, he added, could be as high as “10,000.”
Remulla did express regret over failing to take Dela Rosa into custody in May. “I dropped the ball. I should’ve arrested him at the Senate,” he said.
Powerful people
As for Ang, he has been able to exit the country through “the backdoor,” said Remulla, without providing details about the alleged escape. And Co? In September, Remulla announced that he was flying to France to get the former lawmaker and bring him back to the Philippines. “We know where he is. We know the address. We know his house,” he confidently declared. Co remains out of reach of Philippine law to this day.
Five months since supposedly mobilizing the entire PNP for an intensified campaign to capture these prominent, powerful people accused of heinous crimes and bring them to justice, Remulla’s track record so far has been a big fat zero. It’s been fiasco after fiasco for him, marked more by public posturing and striptease pronouncements where he would seemingly pluck hypothetical scenarios and numbers out of thin air, than by any actual successful law-enforcement operation.
Remulla’s incompetence as head of one of the government’s most critical departments has become inescapable. And yet, according to the Palace, President Marcos continues to have trust and confidence in his DILG Secretary. Given Remulla’s (non)performance, that trust is not only misplaced, but also a disservice to the country.
