Just when you think things couldn't get any crazier the universe goes and proves you wrong and delivers the most epic of soap operas. As documented previously, Senator Bato crawled out of his hidey hole to assist in the coup against Senate President Totto only to be greeted by his nemesis Trillanes with an arrest warrant from the ICC which led to him running from the NBI and seeking protection inside the Senate building.
From his secure place in the Senate, Bato sought sympathy for his plight from his PMA class alumni by breaking into song.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2228447/this-troubled-pmaer-breaks-into-song-for-alumni-sympathy |
A day after pleading with the commander in chief, the embattled ex-police general appealed for “peaceful support” also from the police and military—by breaking into song.
Make that his alma mater song from the Philippine Military Academy (PMA).
Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa particularly called on his “mistah” or fellow PMA alumni to oppose government attempts to arrest him and fly him to the Netherlands to face trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.
“My appeal to my comrades in the PMA: Remember our song—the PMA hymn,” he told reporters in a hallway interview on Wednesday, the third day of his stay at the Senate premises where he has sought refuge to avoid being served the ICC warrant.
He then started to sing the hymn “PMA, Oh Hail Thee”: “When bells for us are rung and our last taps is sung, let generations see our country free….”
After a few more lines, he explained: “I am appealing for a peaceful support so that our government would see that if they are not listening to my plea—that I am a Filipino asking for support from you, that you should not betray me to foreigners. That is my appeal to my comrades, soldiers, police officers who are placed in the same boat.”“Show them our sentiment that they don’t want foreigners to interfere with us. We are Filipinos. If they want to hang me, they want me to be crucified, here in our Philippine courts, not in the hands of foreigners,” he added.
On Tuesday, Dela Rosa also made a direct appeal to President Marcos not to hand him over to the ICC, noting they had held no personal grudges toward each other despite being on opposing political sides.
A member of PMA Class of 1986, Dela Rosa served as chief of the Philippine National Police from in 2016-2018, becoming the top drug war enforcer of then President Rodrigo Duterte.
Dela Rosa was on his third day holed up at the Senate building after the chamber’s leadership stopped government agents from serving an ICC arrest warrant over his role in Duterte’s bloody drug war.
Outside the Senate on Wednesday, about 500 riot police faced off with some 250 protesters demanding the arrest and handover to the ICC of a person they described as the “architect” of Duterte’s drug war.
The crackdown left thousands dead, human rights monitors say, many of them drug users and low-level narcotics peddlers.
Duterte was arrested in March last year, flown to the Netherlands on the same day, and is detained in the Hague where he awaits trial.
The senator had not been seen publicly since November before emerging on Monday to take part in an unexpected vote that helped Duterte loyalists capture control of the Senate.
What kinfd of support was he expecting from his classmen? A military coup? The only way the ICC warrant would not be recognized is if the government collapsed completely. Is that really what he wanted? At the very least he did want a vigil outside the Senate building.
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| https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/727662/bato-dela-rosa-says-he-will-be-arrested-calls-for-vigil-outside-senate |
Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa claimed in a live video on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, that operatives from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) were set to arrest him after the Senate session.
In the video, dela Rosa called on his supporters to go to the Senate and hold a vigil outside the building.
“Meron na pong mga operatiba ng NBI at ng CIDG na pupunta dito para ako’y arestuhin,” dela Rosa said.
(NBI and CIDG operatives are coming here to arrest me.)
Dela Rosa appealed for the public to help him, saying he did not want another Filipino to be brought to The Hague, following former president Rodrigo Duterte.
(Let us not allow another Filipino to be brought to The Hague, after President [Rodrigo] Duterte.)
Call for vigil
Dela Rosa urged supporters to gather in front of the Senate to stop what he described as a plan to arrest him and bring him to The Hague.
(I call on you: I hope you come here. Help us. Let us have a vigil in front of the Senate.)
(That is not acceptable for us Filipinos.)
The senator made the appeal after he was seen exiting the session hall when the plenary resumed on Wednesday, May 13.
He later boarded the elevator with his legal counsel and refused to take questions from the media.
Dela Rosa, a former Philippine National Police chief, has been linked to the Duterte administration’s bloody war on drugs.
How would a vigil prevent Bato's arrest?
Here's where the drama happens. Moments after Bato posted that video there was a shooting inside the Senate building. The details remain unclear but it seems armed men tried to enter the building and the Sergeant-At-Arms fired a warning shot.
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| https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/987557/men-entry-senate-shooting-dilg-chief/story/ |
Armed men allegedly tried to enter the Senate building through its second floor, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said on Wednesday after a two-hour tense situation at the upper chamber.
In an interview with reporters, Remulla said personnel from the Senate’s Office of the Sergeant-At-Arms (OSAA) fired a warning shot at the armed men.
“At approximately, 7:46 (p.m.), armed men tried to enter through the second floor but were stopped by the OSAA. They had firearms with them, but the OSAA fired a warning shot,” he said.
“They retreated at the back and then started firing indiscriminately into the air. Now, we do not have a definite count of how many people tried to enter the building,” Remulla added.
The Interior Secretary said they are still investigating the identities of those who fired the shots.
“We still have to determine through CCTV footage kung ilan talaga sila (as to how many there really are),” he said.
Gunshots rang out at the Senate amid an ongoing lockdown at the upper chamber, where Dela Rosa is under protective custody.
The tension at the Senate developed after the Supreme Court (SC) did not issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) sought by Dela Rosa, who is facing an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Remulla said they are still determining the persons behind the incident.
“We are in the process of determining who is behind this,” he said.
“We have instructed the GSIS, the Senate building, the Senate staff to secure all the CCTVs. Our mission here, the President sent me here, number one is to secure the senators. There’s no politics at this time,” Remulla added.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) raised its status to full alert amid the tensions at the Senate premises on Wednesday evening.
On the other hand, the Armed Forces of the Philippines said military personnel seen inside the Senate building are Marine Security & Escort Group (MSEG) personnel.
Who were these armed men? Why were they trying to enter the building? The NBI has said there was no order to arrest Bato so they likely were not government officials.
It was pure chaos at the Senate which provided the perfect cover for now wanted-for-crimes-against-humanity Senator Bato to crawl back into his hole.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2229192/at-large-again-bato-dela-rosa-sneaks-out-of-senate |
Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa made a predawn escape on Thursday from the Senate, where he was given safe refuge after agents from the National Bureau of Investigation failed to arrest him earlier in the week on a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.
The senator slipped out around 2:30 a.m., hours after gunshots erupted inside the Senate building, throwing staff and journalists into panic as personnel from the chamber’s Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms (Osaa) exchanged fire with a group of unidentified armed men.
Dela Rosa left “together with” Sen. Robinhood Padilla, one of his staunchest allies, according to Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano, quoting a report by Osaa. Cayetano said the report did not say whether the two senators rode in the same vehicle.
There were no gunshot injuries from the shooting that lasted around three minutes along a corridor on the second floor of the Senate building, Cayetano said, angrily denouncing the “attack against the Senate.”
Last Monday, senators decided to take Dela Rosa under their “protective custody” after he broke free from NBI agents trying to arrest him. He dashed several floors up the Senate building and into his office. Later at the Session Hall, he denounced the NBI action.
Cayetano said Dela Rosa was free to leave the Senate as there was no local case against him and no local court had issued an arrest warrant for him.
“In that sense, it’s like he left protective custody voluntarily,” the Senate leader said. Cayetano, a lawyer, added that in a “legal technical sense,” Dela Rosa did not escape.
He said that the senator’s wife, Nancy, sent him a long text message to explain that her husband left the Senate for its own safety and to spare it from his personal troubles.
“It is for this reason I am sure that Ronald decided to ‘escape,’” she said in a text message to Cayetano, which he read to reporters.
“He told me that the longer he stays inside the Senate, more people would be affected,” she said. “No matter how safe he must have felt inside the Senate, everyone’s safety was still more important to him.”
According to Nancy, when she left the Senate at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, her husband told her he would “stay put” there because it was safer for him.
Israelito Torreon, Dela Rosa’s legal counsel, met with reporters close to midnight after things had settled down and showed pictures of him with the senator, which he said were taken before speaking with them.
Torreon posted another picture of himself and the senator on his social media account at 1:11 a.m. on Thursday, dismissing rumors of Dela Rosa’s escape.
By Thursday morning, various sources, including one senator, cited a Senate secretariat report that said Dela Rosa left the premises around 2:30 a.m. on Thursday.
Cayetano, who said he left the Senate before midnight on Wednesday, told reporters that he learned that Dela Rosa had slipped out around noon on Thursday.
That's right. Bato escaped! Apparently he and Senator Robin Padilla ran off together. And maybe that was the point of all the chaos. Maybe it was all staged.
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| https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2026/5/14/senate-chaos-staged-that-s-the-sentiment-of-our-nbi-agents-matibag-says-1447 |
Following chaos due to gunfire inside the Senate on Wednesday night, the internet is rife with speculations that the disturbance was orchestrated to let International Criminal Court suspect Sen. Ronald dela Rosa leave the chamber's premises.
Palace Press Officer Claire Castro brought this up at a news conference in MalacaƱang on Thursday with top law enforcement officials, who sought to clarify details of the shocking scenes in the chamber where gunshots had been heard on live television.
Castro asked Melvin Matibag, director of the National Bureau of Investigation, if there were views that the commotion may have been "staged" to let Dela Rosa slip out of the Senate.
"I'll be very honest, that's the sentiment of our NBI agents," replied Matibag, who stressed that an investigation is still underway to determine the truth behind the mayhem.
Agents of the NBI arrived Wednesday at the Government Service Insurance System building in Pasay City — the Senate leases part of the compound — after GSIS president Wick Veloso asked the investigating agency to secure their premises, said Matibag.
He stressed that the NBI was not inside the Senate when the chaos erupted.
Castro claimed that Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Mao Aplasca, a former police general, was the first to fire a warning shot when an NBI agent confirmed their presence in the GSIS wing.
She also stressed that there was "no assault" on the Senate by NBI agents and that there was no operation to arrest Dela Rosa, whose legal team did not secure an immediate restraining order from the Supreme Court to prevent his arrest.
"Ang bagong Pilipino ay para sa katotohanan at hindi para sa pagko-cover up," Castro said as the press conference concluded.
(A renewed Filipino is for the truth and not for creating a coverup.)
No one was injured in the five-hour incident that catapulted the Philippines into the international spotlight.
The NBI personnel were not only securing the GSIS building amid the tension but were also determining the location of Dela Rosa, who had not been seen in public for six months, Matibag noted.
He added that the alleged gunman arrested following the incident was not their personnel but rather a "volunteer."
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has denied that the government had a hand in the chaos that gripped the Senate on Wednesday night, when Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano also claimed that the institution was "under attack."
Cayetano on Thursday denied talk that only Senate security opened fire on Wednesday night, calling it "fake news."
He stressed that shots came from both sides.
"I mean, you have the videos, guys."
He said there have been "conspiracy theories from both sides" since Wednesday night.
He added he has talked to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and "informed him of the inconsistencies" in the NBI's statements.
He said he agrees with Department of the Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla's suggestion for an independent joint investigation into the incident.
"Bakit joint? Kasi jurisdiction 'to ng [Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms] at ng Senate," Cayetano, who is in his first week as Senate president, said.
(Why a joint investigation? Because this is the jurisdiction of OSAA and the Senate)
He added that he knew as early as last night of talk that the incident was staged, adding "the accusations are all over."
An unnamed senator earlier in the day told the media that Dela Rosa had already left the Senate premises before dawn on Thursday, and Matibag and Philippine National Police chief Jose Nartatez Jr. could not immediately confirm the development in the briefing.
But Matibag, also a lawyer, pointed out that since Dela Rosa has been in the protective custody of the Senate, the chamber has the "responsibility" to surrender the senator when his presence is requested.
The NBI suspended operations to arrest Dela Rosa after the Senate placed him in protective custody and out of respect for the senator's petition before the Supreme Court, he said.
Dela Rosa disappeared last November following reports of an ICC warrant against him.
He emerged at the Senate on Monday shortly before his allies installed Cayetano as the new Senate leader and ahead of Vice President Sara Duterte's impeachment by the House.
NBI officials had tried to arrest Dela Rosa as soon as he arrived in the Senate's parking area Monday, but the former police chief outran the agents and sought refuge in the plenary hall, where his allies pushed to keep him under the Senate's protection.
On Wednesday, chaos ensued inside the Senate building in Pasay City as gunshots were fired after Dela Rosa announced on social media that he would soon be arrested.
Dela Rosa is among the named co-perpetrators in former President Rodrigo Duterte's crimes against humanity case before the ICC.
Dela Rosa served as the chief implementor of the former administration's bloody anti-drug campaign that saw thousands of suspected drug users and dealers killed in police operations.
Of course, maybe it wasn't staged. Many questions remain as to what exactly happened and why it happened. There will be an investigation and hopefully it will uncover the truth. As of now the impeachment court is scheduled to convene on May 18th. What happens between then and now and during the trial remains to be seen but we can certainly expect more circus antics.
