Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa’s last confirmed whereabouts placed him somewhere in Mindanao, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said, shooting down a wave of online claims that authorities had already taken the senator into custody on Tuesday.
The senator, who is wanted under an International Criminal Court warrant tied to the drug-war killings case that also names former President Rodrigo Duterte, has evaded capture. Remulla was blunt in rejecting the viral reports. “There has been no arrest for Senator Bato. There has been a lot of speculations that he has been apprehended and he is being whisked away to The Hague, those aren’t true,” he told reporters.
Some social media users had floated the theory that officials were deliberately concealing an arrest to keep Dela Rosa’s backers from mounting protests. Remulla waved off that idea as well.
The interior secretary laid out what would happen if and when the senator is finally caught, stressing that authorities intend to move by the book. “He will be booked, he will be made to appear in court and then for extradition,” he said, framing the sequence as one bound by legal procedure rather than any shortcut to the Netherlands.
The rumor mill drew responses from several corners of government. Philippine Air Force spokesperson Col. Ma. Christina Basco knocked down a specific claim that the senator had been taken to Villamor Air Base in Pasay City. National Bureau of Investigation Director Melvin Matibag, along with the Department of Justice, likewise indicated they had received nothing to substantiate an arrest. Dela Rosa’s counsel, Israelito Torreon, kept his response terse when the matter came up on dzRH on Tuesday: “we have no news.”
Malacañang, for its part, cast the whole episode as politically motivated. Palace press officer Claire Castro suggested the arrest chatter was engineered to pull public attention away from the questionable transactions being scrutinized in the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte, pointing a finger at her camp.
Remulla, whose department oversees the police tasked with locating the senator, reiterated that any enforcement action would be handled openly. He committed to transparency the moment Dela Rosa enters government custody, saying every step would track with the rule of law.
