“I will go with him to jail,” once said then-presidential aide Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go. “That is how much I love the President [Rodrigo Duterte].” He uttered these words when he was campaigning for the Senate. Thanks to his master’s endorsement, he secured the third-highest number of votes – 20 million — during that election.
Years later, another senator, Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, said he was ready to join Mr. Duterte, who by then had just been arrested and flown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He added he hoped “they would allow me to take care of him.”
Close ties to Duterte, too, powered Dela Rosa’s career, from his stint at the Philippine National Police, ascending all the way to the helm of the organization, just in time to be the chief implementer of the so-called war on drugs in 2016. Like Go, he also became senator in 2019, mistaking his sworn duty to the public for his sworn loyalty to the old man from Davao.
Dela Rosa has been in hiding for months now, abandoning his senatorial responsibilities because he is deathly afraid of being arrested. For a long time, since Duterte’s own arrest in March, rumor has it that his co-accused would be next, even as no official announcement of who the co-accused are had been made.
It was not until this Saturday that the public got wind of who exactly were on the list. The two senators are on it, as well as former Secretary of Justice Vitaliano Aguirre II, plus former law enforcement officials Vicente Danao, Camilo Cascolan, Oscar Albayalde, Dante Gierran, and Isidro Lapena.
Cascolan died in 2023.
As is expected, at least two of the men have denied any wrongdoing. Go called his inclusion unfair and baseless, while Aguirre, on national television, made light of the accusation and said it was hilarious.
At least he is not going into hiding — or at least, that is what he said.
In the next few days, we expect a slew of denials – with matching tears, perhaps – from those insisting on their innocence, or on the lawfulness of what they did during those dark days. But we must also prepare for a more menacing kind of retaliation. The ICC will be demonized, will be accused of colluding with the administration, the lawyers will be discredited, and everything about the case will be linked to politics especially since the next national election is not far from the horizon.
But not the families of those killed in the drug war, who felt greater assurance that their fallen kin would obtain justice.
Certainly the fight would be long and tedious. Proceedings even in an international court like the ICC take years, owing to its adherence in due process and strict appreciation of evidence. Theatrics and appeals to the gullible do not hold water here.
In the meantime, may we all be reminded that professing loyalty to a person never pays, because people are fallible and driven by personal interests. Standing by someone also requires us to shed some moral scruples or critical thinking facilities – in fact, even common sense. That, in itself, is already a price too steep to pay.
