There is something to be said about those who claim to be courageous, totally unafraid, and absolutely committed to a chosen course of action or advocacy, and then later on backtrack and find ways and means to avoid accountability when the proverbial s** t hits the fan.
Take, for instance, Senator Bato Dela Rosa who, during the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte, was considered the architect of the war on drugs campaign that extrajudicially killed thousands of suspected criminals, drug addicts, pushers, and producers of illegal drugs.
It was during his stint as PNP chief from 2016 to 2018, when the war on drugs exploded in the streets and sidewalks, and just a few months after his appointment, official reports from the Philippine National Police (PNP) already recorded a death toll of over 3,000.
Senator Dela Rosa cannot in any way deny that he had full knowledge about the war on drugs campaign of his mentor and ninong Duterte, considering that when the latter took office as president, Bato was immediately promoted as the newly minted chief of the PNP. And before he was the head honcho of the PNP, he was previously assigned to Mindanao and other Davao posts where he ostensibly established close relationships with the Duterte family.
When suspected drug users and pushers started turning up dead on the streets for allegedly committing acts of resistance against the authorities under the theory of “nanlaban,” no meaningful investigation was conducted by the PNP to determine the culpability of their colleagues in such operations.
During that time, it was then bruited about that it’s “open season” for all those involved in the illegal drugs business with vigilante groups and not a few cops involved in hunting and terminating their existence.
The administration of former president Duterte knew about this since it was the former president himself, while campaigning for his presidency, who declared that he planned to kill all of those involved in criminal and drug syndicates.
The public knew about this because right after Duterte sat in Malacanang, bodies of alleged criminals, and drug users, and pushers started turning up and being reported in the news.
Even before he became president, Duterte was already known as the mayor who eradicated criminality and drugs in Davao in the most brutal way via “salvaging” or extrajudicial killings by a group known as the Davao Death Squad (DDS), which the former president, in one Lower House inquiry session, startlingly admitted was formed by him using prisoners incarcerated in jails.
Obviously, therefore, Senator Bato, who was the PNP chief during the Duterte administration, knew about these neutralizations that happened as a consequence of the violent conduct of the war on drugs. He knew that people would die, and people actually died and he did nothing to prevent it and, instead, chose to conspire with the former president, making sure that the violent war on drugs was effectively waged.
So, in all aspects surrounding the implementation of the Philippine drug war, former PNP chief and now-Senator Bato Dela Rosa is directly accountable and culpable for the extrajudicial killings that happened in the country during the Duterte regime, along with his ninong, of course, who is now detained in The Hague in the Netherlands.
Like his godfather who now faces the prospect of being tried in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity, is Senator Bato also brave enough to face the music and be willing to defend himself to proclaim his innocence?
At this stage, one would find it difficult to believe that the senator is willing to hand himself to the ICC because, right now, all he is thinking about is how to evade arrest through a warrant and how to keep himself from being tried in the ICC by any means possible.
But, as with any organized society where laws are to a great extent dutifully obeyed and followed, accountability is always a potent weapon governments use to regulate public servants and even private citizens so that no one is above the law. That accountability will, in the end, catch up with Senator Dela Rosa, whether he is prepared or not.
