A Philippine lawmaker wanted by the international criminal court for his alleged role enforcing Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody anti-drugs crackdown has secretly fled the senate after spending days holed up in the building to avoid arrest.
The senate president, Alan Peter Cayetano, confirmed to the media that senator Ronald dela Rosa was “no longer in the building” after reports that he had slipped out of the heavily guarded building before dawn.
“I’m waiting for a complete incident report on what time he left,” Cayetano said.
Dela Rosa’s disappearance follows a dramatic week in which he earlier avoided arrest by outrunning government agents as they chased him through the hallways and staircases of the senate. When he reached the building’s chamber, he was given protective custody by the senate president, a longtime Duterte ally.
Dela Rosa had remained in the building for days, but chaos erupted on Wednesday when he announced his arrest was imminent and called upon his supporters to gather outside, leading to a heavy security presence at the building. Gunshots were later fired in the senate, forcing journalists to scramble for cover.
Senate security personnel and National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) personnel exchanged fire, according to an official from the president’s office. Police are investigating the incident.
At a press conference on Thursday, Cayetano read a text message he had been sent by Dela Rosa’s wife in which she thanked senators for their support and apologised for the “confusion and havoc” caused. “It is for this reason I am sure that Ronald made his ‘escape’,” the message added, according to Cayetano, who said “escape” was written in quotation marks.
“He told me that the longer he stays inside the senate, the more all of you will be dragged into the situation. We know that the NBI, the CIDG [Criminal Investigation and Detection Group], the police, or even the military would not storm the senate if he were not inside,” the message continued.
The Philippines president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, has said there were no instructions to arrest Dela Rosa and questioned whether the event was an attempt to “destabilise the government or trigger chaos”.
Marcos is embroiled in a fierce feud with the Duterte family that intensified last year when the former leader Duterte was arrested and transferred to the ICC.
A police spokesperson, Randulf Tuaño, said the shooting was being investigated and that one person detained had “provided names” that were being verified.
It is unclear how Dela Rosa managed to slip out of the building.
Maria Ela L Atienza, a professor at the department of political science, University of the Philippines, called for the senate’s leadership to be held accountable. “In trying to protect [Dela Rosa] they made the senate a laughing stock … because they’re harboring a fugitive,” she said.
Their actions had affirmed the need for Dela Rosa to be tried abroad in the ICC by showing the double standards that exist in the Philippines’ justice system, Atienza said.
“Here, a senator who has all the power and the networks, he can be protected by his friends who are part of the elite of the Philippines,” she said. “Whereas it’s so easy for a regular Filipino, a poor Filipino to be accosted by the police and not even given a proper due process.”
Thousands of people were killed during Duterte’s “war on drugs”, after they were accused of being drug addicts or dealers. Most of the victims were men from poor, urban areas, who were shot dead in the streets or their homes by police, or in some cases unidentified assailants.
Dela Rosa was head of the Philippine national police during Duterte’s administration and is accused of being a chief enforcer of anti-drugs crackdowns. He is one of eight co-perpetrators named by the ICC in its case against Duterte, who is detained at The Hague.
An arrest warrant accuses him of “authorising, condoning and promoting” drug war killings, providing weapons, promising impunity and rewarding perpetrators, according to an ICC arrest warrant that was unsealed on Monday.
He did not respond to a request for comment but has denied wrongdoing.
Cayetano did not state Dela Rosa’s whereabouts but denied accusations that the senate leadership had helped him to leave.
Separately, he announced the impeachment trial of the vice-president, Sara Duterte, a daughter of the former leader, would begin next week.
She was impeached on Monday after a vote in the house of representatives, which is dominated by Marcos allies. A trial will be held in the senate, where her family’s allies have a stronger presence.
If impeached she would be banned from public office, derailing her plans to run for president in 2028. In a video message, she accused Marcos’s administration of “using all government resources to demolish political opposition”.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
