Bato should join Digong

Bato should join Digong | Daily Tribune

There is only one way for Senator “Bato” dela Rosa to prove his loyalty to former President Rodrigo Duterte — by joining him inThe Hague.

Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa was not a mere participant in the Duterte administration’s bloody war on drugs — he was its engineer, its chief enforcer, and its loudest apologist.

As the former chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), Dela Rosa signed Command Memorandum Circular 16-2016, which formally launched Oplan Double Barrel, the cornerstone of Duterte’s campaign of extrajudicial killings under the guise of maintaining public order.

This turned the war on drugs into a war on the poor, on due process and, ultimately, on the very institutions tasked to protect the citizens. With Duterte now detained in The Hague to face a charge of crimes against humanity, it is only right that Bato stands beside him, shoulder to shoulder. That’s what true loyalty looks like. Anything less is personal survival, hence, cowardice.

Dela Rosa’s hand is all over the operation. Oplan Double Barrel split enforcement into two layers: tokhang (“knock and plead”) for barangay-level users and pushers; and operations against so-called “high-value targets” carried out by units like the Philippine Drug Enforcement Group (PDEG) — a unit created under his watch.

While marketed as a comprehensive anti-drug approach, it quickly devolved into an unfettered campaign of murder, fear and profit.

The official body count stands at over 6,000 deaths. Human rights organizations place it closer to 20,000. Most victims were from impoverished communities, were denied due process, and were gunned down based on vague intelligence or planted evidence. Tokhang, despite its humane branding, became synonymous with state-sanctioned killings, while the PDEG became a criminal enterprise within the police force.

By 2022, officers in PDEG — Dela Rosa’s own brainchild — were caught recycling seized drugs, most infamously in the 990-kilo shabu bust involving M/Sgt. Rodolfo Mayo. The case, involving billions worth of methamphetamine, was initially covered up by top police officials. It was the logical end of a system that incentivized violence and corruption. A reward mechanism —offering cash for arrests, seizures, and even kills — turned police work into a vicious marketplace.

The roots of this culture go back to Dela Rosa’s 2016 circular, which used the words “neutralize” and “negate,” opening the door to the use of lethal force as routine enforcement. Bato is the main author of this playbook.

If the War on Drugs were the Third Reich, Bato dela Rosa is Heinrich Himmler, chief of Nazi Germany’s SS. Himmler was the bureaucrat of brutality — he turned ideology into infrastructure.

Like Himmler, Dela Rosa built the machinery of repression under Duterte. He was not just the public face of the drug war, he operationalized it. Both men were not political leaders at the top, but they made mass violence systematic and scalable. Both shielded their atrocities with the rhetoric of order, safety, and obedience. And both were responsible for creating institutions that committed horrors in the name of the state.

Bato now postures with nationalistic soundbites, but when confronted with accountability, he hides. He denies knowledge of the “cash-for-kill” system exposed by retired Col. Royina Garma in her QuadComm testimony, but the public has smelled the stench of blood money. The man who thunders his loyalty to Digong now slinks away from the consequences of that loyalty.

The war on drugs was a moral catastrophe. Communities were shattered. Young lives were lost to rogue police tactics that Bato institutionalized. The people entrusted with protecting the nation instead preyed on it. The PNP was transformed into an apparatus of fear, not safety.

History is already judging this dark chapter. Bato must be judged with it. If Duterte is in The Hague, then Dela Rosa — his enforcer, architect, and partner in this violent enterprise — must be there too. If loyalty meant proudly standing by Duterte then loyalty now means facing the same music in the same courtroom.

The Filipino people deserve justice. And justice begins with accountability — shared, not avoided. For all his tough talk, Bato dela Rosa now stands at a crossroads: to go with Digong and face the consequences of the war he built, or to think only of his own survival by running and hiding.

History will not forget. Neither should we.