The Tamesis
May 15, 2026
Manila – For gangsters and scoundrels, all roads lead to the Senate as a safe haven.
First, the current senator was implicated in the flood control scandal, which was reportedly confirmed by a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee report chaired by Senator Panfilo Lacson. They are Senator Joel Villanueva, Senator Francis Escudero and Senator Jinggoy Estrada. There are also senatorial siblings Mark and Camille Villar, who are facing a criminal investigation by the Justice Department on charges of market manipulation that overvalued land owned by one of their family’s real estate companies by P1.33 trillion. There’s also Sen. Loren Legarda, whose son Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste faces a P24 billion fine and contract cancellation from the Department of Energy for failing to fulfill the government’s solar commitments.
All of the above-mentioned senators, who face civil or criminal investigations (either personally or through relatives) from the Marcos government, joined with senators allied to Duterte to stage coups to overthrow Senate leaders aligned with the ruling government. As a result, the Senate is now ruled by allies of Vice President Sara Duterte. Under new leadership, the Senate has become a haven for all of the aforementioned scandal-plagued senators.
Second, the impeachment complaint against Vice President Sarah has been approved by an unprecedented number of 257 members of Congress and will inevitably be submitted to the Senate soon. Vice President Sara faces four grounds of impeachment, accusing her of misusing secret funds allocated to her office, bribing officials to circumvent procurement guidelines, amassing unexplained wealth and conspiring to assassinate President Marcos, First Lady Lisa Araneta-Marcos and former Speaker Martin Romualz when she was also killed. But with senators allied to Duterte taking over leadership of the chamber last Monday, the Senate has become a haven for Vice President Sara.
Third, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Senator Ronald “Barto” de la Rosa. Last Monday, the National Bureau of Investigation, along with former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, attempted to execute an ICC arrest warrant, but the new Senate leadership blocked the arrest by granting de la Rosa “protective custody.” The Senate has now become de la Rosa’s safe haven.
Even within the Senate chamber, the Senate had no power to prevent dela Rosa’s arrest. There is absolutely nothing in our Constitution or any law that gives the Senate the authority to issue “protective custody” to prevent his arrest even inside the Senate.
Indeed, the arguments invoked by de la Rosa’s allies are convoluted. They argue that the ICC no longer has jurisdiction to arrest dela Rosa because the Philippines has withdrawn from the ICC. However, they cited the ICC Statute itself (in particular Article 59 of the Rome Statute), which they said required recourse to local courts as a prerequisite for the execution of an ICC arrest warrant.
There is no need to resort to local courts in executing an ICC arrest warrant because we have a domestic law, Republic Act 9851, which gives the Philippine authorities the discretion to “transfer…” [an] “Refer Philippine defendants to the appropriate international tribunal” if “such crimes are already under investigation or prosecution before an international tribunal.” The ICC itself has ruled that recourse to local courts is not mandatory for the execution of an ICC arrest warrant (Prosecutor v Dominic Ongwen, ICC-02/04/01/15, 7 July 2015).
Dela Rosa’s petition to the Supreme Court to block the execution of the ICC arrest warrant against him is also completely baseless and the High Court should reject the same outright. In Pangilinan v. Cayetano (GR No. 238875, March 16, 2021), the Supreme Court has finally ruled that “the International Criminal Court retains jurisdiction over any and all acts committed by state actors before March 17, 2019. Accordingly, withdrawal from the Rome Statute does not affect the responsibility of individuals charged before the International Criminal Court for acts committed to date.”
The ICC arrest warrant accuses de la Rosa of at least 32 murders between July 2016 and April 2018, during which the Philippines was still a member of the ICC. As affirmed by our country’s Supreme Court, the ICC retains jurisdiction over acts committed by de la Rosa while the Philippines was still a member of the ICC.
If there was ever a time for the Marcos administration to show strong political will, it is now. The Senate must not be allowed to become a den of scoundrels.
