‘Bato presumed armed, dangerous’

MANILA, Philippines — As a fugitive from justice, Sen. Ronald Dela Rosa is presumed to be “armed and dangerous” and should be dealt “with caution,” National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) director Melvin Matibag said.

“It’s our standard protocol. If we’re doing a search or locating a fugitive from justice, our presumption is that he is armed and dangerous,” Matibag said at the Saturday News Forum.

“So our instruction to our law enforcement and NBI agents is to proceed with caution … in the area where he is suspected to be,” Matibag stressed.

The NBI and the Philippine National Police have deployed dedicated tracker teams to arrest Dela Rosa, who has an outstanding warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Dela Rosa has been in hiding since November last year when news of ICC’s issuance of an arrest warrant came out. He resurfaced briefly last May 11 during a Senate coup that saw the ouster of Sen. Vicente Sotto III as Senate president and the takeover of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, who gave him “protective custody” that shielded him from arrest.

He slipped out of the Senate before dawn the next day, hours after a shooting incident at the Senate premises instigated, it turned out, by Senate sergeant-at-arms Mao Aplasca.

The NBI chief said information received by agents indicated that Dela Rosa is still in the Philippines, but Matibag acknowledged that the country’s complex geography could make escaping through the so-called backdoor possible.

“There are lots of points of entry and exits [that] sometimes we cannot monitor,” he said. “We already ordered our district and regional offices to do their own monitoring in their respective areas, apart from the dedicated team, the tracking team to go out there to locate Sen. Bato dela Rosa,” he added.

The NBI is also coordinating with the Bureau of Immigration, which recently said there is no record of the senator departing the country.

Breakdown

Matibag lamented what he called a “breakdown of law and order,” citing as an example the Senate’s decision to grant Dela Rosa protective custody only to allow him to escape later.

“I’m wondering whether the Senate has a different definition of protective custody: you can’t arrest him, but we can make him run away,” the NBI chief stressed.

“I think it’s hard if our system is like that because it will set a bad precedent now that a fugitive can hide in the Senate,” Matibag bewailed.

“So that means if you have plans to become a professional criminal, and you have [resources] to be a senator, you will be a senator, so that when the time comes for you to be arrested, you will just be in the Senate. I think we need to realize that because I notice that there is a breakdown of law and order right now,” he added.

For Sen. Panfilo Lacson, Dela Rosa could be hoping to evade arrest long enough to see a presidential election victory of Vice President Sara Duterte.

Retired senior associate justice Antonio Carpio, for his part, said the SC’s denial of Dela Rosa’s TRO petition does not necessarily mean a rejection of his legal challenge to the validity of the arrest warrant issued by the ICC.

“It’s just a denial of the TRO, and the main issue has yet to be decided upon,” he said over radio dzBB when asked if there is still a legal remedy for the senator aside from surrendering.

“But 9-5-1, most likely that will also be the vote in the main case, I think,” he said. He was referring to the high tribunal’s vote rejecting Dela Rosa’s petition for TRO.

Meanwhile, Dela Rosa’s lawyer Israelito Torreon said his client has confided to him his willingness to reappear if a domestic court issues a warrant for his arrest.

“Not a guarantee, but based on our conversation he told me… if the Philippine Constitution will be followed, if the rules of criminal procedure will be followed because we are an independent country, he will face it. I’m certain of that,” Torreon said over Bilyonaryo News Channel on Friday. — Neil Jayson Servallos, Ghio Ong