EDITORIAL - So arrest him already

On March 12 last year, a day after former president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and turned over to the Interpol, Sen. Ronald dela Rosa posted on Facebook that “if all legal options fail… I am ready to join the old man, hoping that they would allow me to take care of him.”

Dela Rosa now has a chance to show his undying loyalty to “the old man,” after the Supreme Court rejected his petition to prevent his arrest by Philippine authorities in connection with cases against him before the International Criminal Court.

The senator recently indicated a change of heart, clarifying that he may not be allowed to serve as Duterte’s caregiver anyway, since they would be held in separate cells in case he himself lands in the ICC’s detention facility at the Scheveningen Prison in The Hague.

In the meantime, Dela Rosa has again disappeared, after being escorted out of the Senate by Robinhood Padilla in the wee hours of May 14. The previous day, Dela Rosa had popped up at the Senate to help install Alan Peter Cayetano as Senate president, narrowly escaping capture by a team from the National Bureau of Investigation.

That evening, President Marcos said he had told the NBI not to arrest Dela Rosa as the new Senate majority insisted on a local court order on his case, particularly his extremely urgent petition to the Supreme Court for a TRO on his arrest.

Yesterday, the SC ruled on the original petition for a TRO, filed way back in March last year, rejecting the pleading while not yet touching on the merits of the main case regarding ICC jurisdiction.

In the absence of any TRO, the government could have already carried out the ICC arrest warrant even without waiting for the SC order yesterday. Now that there is a clear rejection by the SC of the petition for a TRO, the government must show consistency in dealing with the ICC proceedings and implement the arrest warrant. That is if it can, when the chicken has already flown the coop.

His lawyers have maintained that Dela Rosa is not trying to avoid accountability. The sincerity of this statement is best demonstrated if their client would surface and face the charges against him.

If he doesn’t, the Marcos administration must show political will in carrying out an arrest warrant in international proceedings that it maintains it recognizes under a local law, Republic Act 9851, covering crimes against humanity. RA 9851 carries provisions precisely to address situations such as this, wherein the accused offender is protected by the Senate itself.