Senator Ronald Bato dela Rosa has quietly left the premises of the Senate. Except for the warrant of arrest purportedly issued by the International Court of Justice it looks like he is a free man. I have not heard of anymore summons, none from any court, CIDG and the National Bureau of investigation. However I don’t think Senator Bato is comfortable with the ICC warrant hanging like a sword of Damocles over his head.
Bato is a hero to many but a heel to criminal syndicates and political and armed elements of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The CPP/NPA and their phalanx in and out of Congress lost no time in demanding for the head of Senator Bato dela Rosa. From where they are moreover the members of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) “Sinagtala” Class of 1986 has declared their “unwavering support” for their beleaguered “mistah”. The declaration came on the heels of the statement of Magdalo Partylist Rep. Garry Alejano that it is now easier to enforce the ICC arrest warrant on Bato since he is already out of the premises of the Senate.
Oh well, this much I can say. The members of Sinagtala class are honed in battles against the enemies of the state so different from the Magdalo of Trillanes and Alejano class who are notoriously linked to vicious attempt to overthrow the government.
For us Davaowenyos, Senator Bato is best remembered for subduing and neutralizing a Malaysian member of Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist Mohammad Noor Fikrie Bin Abd Kahar, who attempted to detonate a homemade bomb in the crowded People’s Park in December 2012.
In July 2013 as head of the Davao City Police Office, then Colonel dela Rosa also led the police operation against a kidnap-for-ransom syndicate that was actually operating in Metro Manila.
Three of its members were killed, while one was captured following a shootout.
The kidnap victim, identified as Sally Chua, businesswoman in Quezon City, persuaded her abductors to take her to Davao City where she said she has sufficient bank deposits to pay her ransom. She was rescued by police officers inside the Davao City Allied Bank-CM Recto branch, while the suspect escorting her was arrested.
Interviewed later, Chua said that all the while she thought that her only chance of survival is in Davao City because she heard that Mayor Rodrigo Duterte leaves no quarters against criminals.
I distinctly remember Colonel Bato dela Rosa still holding his Tavor rifle and megaphone telling a TV crew “The order of the Mayor is to shoot if they refuse to surrender”.
The saga of Bato dela Rosa is one of success. He went on to rise from his rank and became the Chief of the Philippine National Police. He made a ran for the Senate and was elected.
He was impleaded in the International Criminal Court case against former President Rodrigo Duterte for alleged crime against humanity. The charges against him stemmed from the fact that he served as Chief of the Davao City Police Office. It is on record that Leila de Lima, in 2009, who was Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights conducted a special probe into the reported extrajudicial killings in Davao City which she claimed were carried out by the Davao Death Squad.
De Lima alleged that thousands of EJK victims were buried in the abandoned quarry which is located near a park and a number of subdivisions. Under her personal supervision she conducted several diggings in the quarry but despite the number of months of diggings and searches her team found nothing.
Eighteen years had passed. De Lima, who started the probe was later appointed as Secretary of Justice, then later elected senator and now a Mamamayang Liberal partylist representative. To date she has not stopped her quest only this time by blabbering . But until today, as I write this piece, she has not come out with a single piece of evidence.
Why? She started out with a brazen lie which she swallowed hook-line-and sinker. To start with the Davao Death Squad she and the rest of the anti-Duterte had been harping on, is a phantom force. It was a psychological warfare conceptualized by Police Regional Commander Dionisio Tan-gatue, Jr. in 1984 to scare the liquidation squad of the New Peoples Army. Duterte, in those times had just passed the bar and was appointed as Assistant City Fiscal.
Duterte and now Bato face trial at the ICC for fabricated crimes based on the DDS myth. The sad part is that our leaders are so feeble to question the ICC why its citizens Rodrigo Duterte and Ronald dela Rosa are accused of crime against humanity for the deaths of 43 people for the duration of six years as President and 28 years as Mayor.
