The Senate needs to update its rules to address chronic absenteeism among its members, the chairperson of the chamber’s ethics committee said Friday — a position he laid out as his panel formally received a complaint against Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa.
Sen. JV Ejercito, who heads the Senate Committee on Ethics, said the existing rules simply do not cover attendance violations, leaving the body without a clear mechanism to sanction members who repeatedly skip plenary sessions. Ejercito said the committee on rules has the authority to draft the necessary amendments, but any changes would require approval from the full chamber.
“Perhaps it was not anticipated before that there would be a legislator who would be absent, which is why we now need to amend this as a whole body to include this,” Ejercito said in a statement in Filipino.
He was responding in part to criticism that followed an earlier remark he made about the absence of a “no work, no pay” rule applicable to Dela Rosa’s situation — a comment that drew sharp reactions online. Ejercito pushed back on the interpretation that he was trying to kill the complaint.
“I am not saying that I want the case against Senator Bato dela Rosa to be dismissed outright,” he said. “What I’m saying is that, it would be set aside if we are to take it up, because it is not yet covered by the Senate rules.”
Michael Henry Yusingco, a nonresident research fellow at the Ateneo School of Government, acknowledged the gap in the rules but said it did not excuse the Senate from acting. “Granted that the rules don’t cover this matter, the obvious unfairness here demands public censure of the erring senator from his peers,” he told Inquirer.net on Friday. “They really know how to disrespect the struggles of many Filipinos.”
Dela Rosa last appeared in plenary sessions on November 10 last year. His prolonged absence follows the announcement by Ombudsman Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla on November 8 that the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant against him. Other government officials said at the time that they had yet to receive formal documentation of the warrant.
Dela Rosa is identified by the ICC as a co-perpetrator in the Duterte administration’s war on drugs, during which he served as Philippine National Police chief from 2016 to 2018. Human rights organizations and the ICC prosecutor estimate the death toll from that campaign at between 12,000 and 30,000, far above the government’s official figure of at least 6,000.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte, who faces related charges before the same court, was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport on March 12, 2025, and has since been held in The Hague. The ICC retained jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed in the Philippines between November 2011 and March 2019, the period during which the country remained a signatory to the Rome Statute before Duterte’s withdrawal took effect.
