It was a scene straight from a comic laugh-in show. The now less-than-honorable Bato dela Rosa was seen frantically ascending the back stairs of the Senate building, outrunning NBI agents armed with an ICC warrant. It was a deplorable sight, both undignified and revolting, that a senator known for bravado during the heyday of the Duterte regime could cowardly evade arrest.
That chase involving Bato has become the emblem of a Senate that has sunk so low in public esteem, and of a Senate that has become a laughingstock among parliaments in many of the world’s capitals.
It was the voluble Sen. Allan Peter Cayetano who calmly announced on the Senate floor that Bato, after so many months in hiding, was inside the Senate building, thus ushering in a new majority in the chamber. For a long while, Cayetano’s minority group lacked the numbers to wrest control of the Senate leadership. It was the hiding Bato who provided the crucial warm body for the magic number of 13 needed to control the Senate.
But what is to become now of Bato, with the NBI and the ubiquitous Sen. Trillanes out to bring him to The Hague? It was then that the newly minted Senate President Allan announced that Bato would be accorded “protective custody,” to the consternation of former Supreme Court Justice Adolf Azcuna, who argued that the Senate has no such power. But for how long could senators protect one of their own who is charged as a co-conspirator in crimes against humanity? To do so would further submerge the institution into the abyss as a haven for scoundrels and scalawags.
There had to be a way out for the running bull, who had now become the biggest elephant in the room. Enter trigger-happy OSSA chief Mao Aplasca, who supposedly solved Bato’s problem with a warning shot followed by a hail of gunfire. That became the basis for the performative declaration by Cayetano that the Senate was under attack.
Under attack from whom? From the handful of NBI agents assigned to secure the GSIS perimeter? Or was it an attack manufactured by Cayetano himself, fearful of the unraveling of his leadership amid confusion and panic?
It is now mission accomplished, for in the wee hours of the morning, the running bull was once again on the run, leaving behind a Senate in shambles, with its leadership gasping for breath as it lost the battle for public trust and respect.
