The Philippine Supreme Court yesterday rejected a bid by Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa for a temporary restraining order to prevent his arrest and transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
On May 11, the ICC unsealed a warrant for Dela Rosa’s arrest, charging him with crimes against humanity for his role in leading former President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs” campaign. Dela Rosa subsequently fled into his office in the Senate, before slipping out of the building before dawn on May 14.
The senator, whose current whereabouts are unknown, also filed three petitions to the Supreme Court, requesting that it stop authorities from arresting him and surrendering him to The Hague-based court.
In a 9-5-1 ruling handed down yesterday, the Supreme Court justices denied Dela Rosa’s petition for a temporary restraining order and status quo ante order, the court said in a statement. It clarified that the judges “only decided on the prayers for interim relief. The main issues raised by the parties in their pleadings and motions are yet to be resolved in the main case.” It added that the Supreme Court would release its full resolution, as well as the concurring and dissenting opinions of the 15 justices, on May 25.
Dela Rosa, who served as Philippine National Police chief for the first two years of Duterte’s presidential term, is wanted by the ICC for his prominent role in the anti-drug campaign, which raged throughout Duterte’s six years in office (2016-2022). Estimates of the number killed during the campaign range from an official estimate of around 6,000 to as many as 30,000.
If arrested, Dela Rosa would join his former boss, Duterte, who was arrested in March 2025 and extradited to the ICC for his role in the campaign. The 81-year-old is set to stand trial after a pretrial panel last month ruled that there were “substantial grounds” to believe that he was guilty of crimes against humanity.
The Supreme Court ruling clears the way for the potential arrest of Dela Rosa, whom the Office of the Solicitor General described last week as a “fugitive from justice.”
Speaking after yesterday’s ruling, Claire Castro, a spokesperson for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said that the presidential palace will leave it to the Department of Justice to interpret the Supreme Court’s ruling. Justice Minister Fredderick Vida said last week that the country would “definitely” honor the ICC warrant.
“For now, we can say that the warrant of arrest is valid against Senator Bato dela Rosa,” Castro said.
Dela Rosa’s lawyers said that their client will exhaust all the available legal remedies, including filing a motion for reconsideration to the Supreme Court.
“Today’s resolution is not a judgment on the merits,” the lawyers said in a statement. “It is not a final ruling on the legality of enforcing an ICC process within Philippine territory.”
The ruling is the latest development in the political drama that has monopolized Philippine political coverage for the past two weeks. On May 11, Dela Rosa emerged from six months of hiding in order to cast the deciding vote for a Senate leadership coup that installed Alan Peter Cayetano, an ally of former President Duterte, as the chamber’s president. The aim of this was to forestall or frustrate the impending impeachment of Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, who was impeached by the House of Representatives the same day for a range of transgressions. Duterte’s impeachment trial began in the Senate earlier this week.
However, Dela Rosa was confronted by officers from the National Bureau of Investigation who showed up at the Senate building to execute the ICC warrant. He then hid inside his Senate office, where Cayetano and other allies subsequently declared that they had placed him under the chamber’s “protective custody.” The ensuing standoff erupted into violence on Wednesday night as Senate security personnel and government agents attempting to apprehend Dela Rosa briefly exchanged fire within the Senate building.
However much they may be veiled in the language of high principle, both the ICC warrants and the impeachment of Sara Duterte sit downstream of the political feud that has raged between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the Duterte family for much of the past two years. As The Diplomat details in a new video, the two leaders teamed up to great political effect ahead of the 2022 presidential election, when they both were elected with decisive majorities, before falling out sharply over a mix of personal and political disagreements.
The two sides are now locked in a zero-sum vendetta in which Marcos and his allies are using the institutions of the state to cripple the Dutertes before the presidential election of 2028, for which Sara Duterte has already announced her candidacy. With Duterte well placed to avoid impeachment in the Senate, it is unlikely that Dela Rosa’s arrest would bring the current, attention-monopolizing standoff to an end.
