CHICKENPIE.He hid in the Senate for four days. Then they made him its president.
Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa — former PNP chief, drug war architect, currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity — spent last week inside the upper chamber, ordering food, running out the clock, and waiting for the law to blink. The law blinked. His allies didn’t arrest him. They elected him Senate President.
Let that sentence sit.
The man with an ICC warrant is now the man with the gavel. He presides over the body that’s supposed to sit as an impeachment court. He oversees a chamber that, by law, ratifies international treaties. Including, theoretically, agreements with the ICC.
This is not irony. Irony would be too polite.
There is a phrase for what happened here, but parliamentary procedure doesn’t have a translation for it. What you are witnessing is not corruption. Corruption implies the system works and someone broke it. This is the system working exactly as designed — for the people who designed it.
The Marcos administration said they’d hand him over. So the Senate did what Philippine institutions do when the law arrives: it reorganized around the inconvenience. Dela Rosa didn’t flee. He didn’t need to. Four days. Air conditioning. Takeout. Then they handed him the gavel.
Why run abroad? Why hide in an embassy? The Senate is tax-funded, climate-controlled, and broadly safe from the kind of legal consequences that ordinary Filipinos face for far smaller things. Just sit in your old chair and wait for your colleagues to hand you a bigger one.
We keep expecting rock bottom. Rock bottom just got promoted.
The ICC wants him for crimes against humanity. The Senate wants him for president. This is not a paradox in the Philippine political system. This is Tuesday.
