Philippines politician trapped in the Senate, captivating a nation – and he’s not coming out

Singapore: A Filipino politician accused of being the architect of the country’s deadly war on drugs hid in the Senate for almost two days after running through the complex to evade investigators trying to send him to The Hague.

Extraordinary CCTV footage shows 64-year-old senator Ronald Dela Rosa and his entourage running through the corridors of the parliament building and stumbling up fire escapes, apparently to escape pursuers from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

Officers were at the building on Monday afternoon to serve a new unsealed arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), but it remains unclear whether they were actively chasing Dela Rosa through the complex or whether he and his staff were scared and distraught.

Either way, the panicked politician and his team found sanctuary in the chamber, where he soon voted in his ally Alan Peter Cayetano as the new Senate president.

Cayetano then promised that Dela Rosa would not be arrested inside the complex and locked down the complex, claiming NBI officers were being disrespectful, according to the news site. rapper.

But if Dela Rosa chooses to leave, the NBI could pursue him again, meaning he is effectively living in a shelter in the Senate.

Ronald Dela Rosa is nursing the wounds on his fingers, but everyone in the room is smiling after his narrow escape on Tuesday.

Dela Rosa was still sheltering there Wednesday, according to a person inside the building. Hundreds of pro and anti demonstrators and crowd control police gathered outside on Tuesday.

The senator, popularly known as Bato, meaning rock in Tagalog, was once the police chief of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who was arrested in March last year and sent to the Netherlands to face charges in the Hague for alleged crimes against humanity.

Human rights groups claim that as many as 30,000 people were killed, mostly by police, during Duterte’s tenure as Davao City mayor and later president. The case against him relates to 76 of the alleged murders.

The scenes in the Senate gripped the Philippines. This was sparked when the ICC made public the arrest warrant for Dela Rosa, a staunch Duterte ally, after secretly issuing it in November last year. ICC claims Dela Rosa “committed the crime of murder against humanity between at least July 3, 2016 and the end of April 2018, when at least 32 people were killed.”

The incident comes amid a broader and similarly brutal political war between supporters of the Duterte family and supporters of incumbent president Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

On the same day Dela Rosa passed the Senate, the Philippine lower house once again impeached Vice President Sara Duterte, the former president’s daughter, for misusing public funds and publicly declaring that she hired a contractor to kill Marcos Jr. if he were assassinated.

The impeachment trial of the younger Duterte moves to the Cayetano Senate, which is filled with family loyalists.

Monday marked Dela Rosa’s first appearance in the Senate since a Filipino official indicated months ago that the ICC arrest warrant was ready.

“I object [Marcos Jr] “You shouldn’t send me to The Hague” rapper Dela Rosa reportedly said on Tuesday.

“We don’t know, one day you may encounter the same obstacle, Mr. President. You will know, you will feel what I feel right now.”

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