A Philippine youth advocacy group is demanding that Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla be denied his government salary, citing a pattern of alleged failures that it says culminated in the non-enforcement of a standing arrest warrant against Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa.
The Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (SPARK) launched the online petition on May 16, collecting roughly 600 signatures by the time of its public statement. The signatories included residents from Remulla’s home province of Cavite as well as from Cagayan, Surigao del Sur, and Bukidnon, the group said.
SPARK accused Remulla of spending two years in office without arresting what it described as corrupt politicians and personalities, naming Zaldy Co, Atong Ang, Harry Roque, and Gerald Bantag as individuals who remained free under his watch. “For his two years in office, his department has failed to arrest corrupt politicians and personalities, including Zaldy Co, Atong Ang, Harry Roque, and Gerald Bantag. His inaction, that eventually let Bato dela Rosa evade accountability, is the final straw in a long line of incompetence and dereliction of duty,” the group said.
Drawing on Commission on Audit data, SPARK pegged Remulla’s annual compensation at P4.672 million and argued that the same accountability standards applied to ordinary workers should extend to cabinet officials. “If employers can insist on ‘no work, no pay’ for their employees, why can’t we assert the same for public servants like Remulla?” the group said.
The group also took aim at Remulla’s flagship Safer Cities Initiative, claiming it targeted poor Filipinos through anti-vagrancy operations rather than going after high-profile fugitives.
Remulla appeared unmoved by the petition. “I haven’t touched my salary since I assumed office. They can have it if they want,” Remulla told the Daily Tribune. “It won’t stop me from doing my job. I work for the good of my country. I work out of duty. I don’t work for a salary.”
The controversy over Dela Rosa’s continued freedom has exposed deep contradictions in the government’s position. Remulla initially said the DILG was “preparing a 10,000-task force for the dragnet operations in case a warrant of arrest for Senator Bato is issued,” only to later characterize the warrant presented by former senator Antonio Trillanes IV as “inactionable” — arguing that the document was a correspondence to the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime and that the Philippines was no longer party to the ICC treaty.
Remulla said the government was “affording Senator Dela Rosa due process by waiting for the Interpol to serve notice,” the same mechanism the administration used to justify the earlier surrender of former President Rodrigo Duterte to the ICC in 2025.
The ICC confirmed on May 11, 2026 that Dela Rosa’s arrest warrant — originally issued under seal on November 6, 2025 by Pre-Trial Chamber I — had been reclassified as public after copies were circulated by Philippine authorities. The warrant alleges he bore responsibility as an indirect co-perpetrator for the deaths of at least 32 people between July 2016 and April 2018, during the Duterte administration’s anti-drug campaign.
Dela Rosa’s legal bid to block his arrest remains pending before the Supreme Court, which in a May 13 resolution declined to grant immediate relief and instead asked all parties to submit their comments within 72 hours.
