CHICKENPIE.Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa has discovered what every Filipino employee already knew: the secret to avoiding accountability is a good Wi-Fi connection.
The Senate is mulling a new rule that would let senators attend sessions online under “justifiable reasons.” The reason isn’t efficiency. It isn’t climate-resilience planning. It isn’t because traffic on EDSA has finally been declared a national emergency, which it should have been in 2009. The rule is being floated because Bato—wanted by the International Criminal Court for his alleged role in Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war—would like to keep voting on laws without the inconvenience of being arrested.
Work-from-hiding. Finally, a WFH policy the Philippines can truly claim as its own.
Filipino workers have been logging in from the road, borrowed Wi-Fi, and the corner of their mother’s bedroom for years. They did it because traffic is real and rent is impossible and the commute takes longer than the shift. Bato wants to do it because the ICC confirmed charges linked to the Duterte drug war. That campaign killed thousands. The exact number depends on who you ask and how brave they’re feeling. Different context. Same Zoom background.
The logic, followed to its conclusion, is genuinely impressive: a man wanted for crimes against humanity is applying for a flexible work arrangement from an undisclosed location. The institution whose job it is to make laws is now considering amending one so a person allegedly implicated in breaking several can still participate in governance. This is not institutional failure. This is governance as performance art. The Senate is committed to the bit.
There is a version of this story where it ends with an arrest. The Philippines does have jurisdiction complications, ICC procedures take time, and Bato technically hasn’t been proven guilty of anything in a court of law. Fair. But there is also a version of this story—the version that is happening—where the Senate just updates the employee handbook instead.
Every Filipino who has ever sent a “sir, pwede po ba WFH today?” and gotten a firm no now understands the hack: get elected first. The rules are different up there. They write the rules. They are writing one right now.
Bato, somewhere undisclosed, is waiting for the connection to stabilize.
