Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa is an imperfect man who perfectly fits the bill. He’s bald and bold, easily an intimidating image. His popular monicker, “The Rock”, additionally, accentuates his solid character as such. He has vowed to sink or swim with his former master.
Don’t look now, but the senator and former chief of the Philippine National Police is bent on having his own hearing on extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during his former boss and forever benefactor’s reign of terror known as the war on drugs. He wants to lead the probe in the Senate, proverbially and traditionally deferred to as the House of Elders.
Unlike the House of the Youngers, commonly derided as the equivalent of the swamp, House lawmakers have formed a four-committee Inquisition known as Quadcom. “ I came to bury Ceazar”, said Mark Antony in a Shakesperean oratory, “ not to praise him.” “ The evil that men do live after them, the good oft interred with their bones.”
The latest snapshot shows good or bad news, depending on which side you belong. The son of the late dictator is gaining from the series of Quadcom revelations, shooting up from 31 percent a few months back to a 38 percent better after the whodunits were spilled publicly in media. The other side, which was responsible for paving the way to bury the former dictator as a hero, is on the slippery slope.
This is a job for superman.
The Rock, the Purser and the Clown— all Duterte allies in the Senate– will not idly sit bad while they agonize over the undeserved eulogy. You ingrate, Senator Go lamented , you were clapping in standing ovation during his six SONAs, praising him to high heavens for cleansing villages of the drug menace. “Did we not benefit from it?” , a guilt-tripping actor and former mayor now a lawmaker asked in the Quadcom probe.
“When I think of the swell time I could have without you,I got nuts”, George told Lennie in John Steinbecks “ Of Mice and Men”. He knew he could not survive alone. Bato and company would not allow the burning of the bonfire of vanity to spread like a wildfire and roast someone at the stakes.
The late Pampanga Gov. Bren Z. Guiao used to say that loyalty is a two-way traffic. Or loosely interpreted, loyalty can be bought in a sense. He was a public man par excellence and a superb politician. He knew which sides of the bread must be buttered when he wanted a one-column photo or a bridge project completed, pronto. Senior Deputy Speaker Dong Gonzales, a favorite ally, must have remembered that well when he named a son, who is now in politics, 90 percent after him.
When the governor lost in a lopsided a race to the popular action star and now Senator Lito Laid, his so-called friends and favorites became scarce . Once, in a private lunch with a former PNP official, Guiao was warned uncannily about fair-weather friends. Guiao later on confirmed the prophetic words with a tinge of sadness and regret that his old friends did not call him anymore. The close ally who lorded it over in the housing agency suddenly stopped calling him or seeing him. Most ,if not all, of them were suddenly unavailable.
The muscular senator ,former Davao police and PNP chief, who suddenly rose from one-star brigadier general to major general according to Congressman Abante, knows the usual route taken by those who forget the past. With other allies in the Senate, they will provide balance to the House hearing that is wreaking havoc on Duterte and company. He will take the road least taken.
Bato, for instance , remembers distinctly the former president’s act of loyalty. A small allowance, he said, was given to police commanders after a police conference, a practice the former president began when he was still the mayor of Davao City`. It’s not a bounty as alleged for police officers, from 20k to IM per kill.,There’s no such thing as a reward system in the drug war, he denied. Smell like a smoking gun to s ome, this newest confession.
Those who champion the cause of the victims of EJKs doubt if Bato can do a better job. How can the alleged perpetrators investigate themselves, a lawyer of the EJK victims, asked? Can the witch see better who’s the fairest of them all in the mirror?
In any case, the proposed Senate hearing can potentially be the greatest show not just for the nation but the whole world . No need for goosesteps march for the faithful in the Senate, please. Former President Duterte should be the main star. Without him, the show would be a box office flop.
There is also former Senator Leila de Lima who should be a sine qua non. How can the Senate not invite her even as hostile witness to the infamous war on drugs when she spent nearly seven years in jail on the basis of fabricated charges? The former senator has no iota of doubt as to who masterminded her ordeal.
The judge who acquitted her of the fabricated drug charges has been kicked up in the judiciary as a justice of the Sandiganbayan. There’s no reason why he should not be in the proposed Senate hearing. Forget about the International Criminal Court probers: they can have the televised Senate hearing afterward. Look forward to what Duterte will say.
Senator Bato can only disinvite a former colleague and other important witnesses at his own peril. His idea of balance in the investigation of the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines vis-à-vis the Quadcom initiative is already compromised from the get go.
“ If Galileo had a verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone”, the English novelist Thomas Hardy said. Bato has the same huge, if not impossible, challenge to prove that Go was not only wrong in rebuking the lawmakers in the House of political apostasy but that his man is the savior of his country.
The other House might prove otherwise.
