Senate President Pro Tempore Ping Lacson has made it a policy to refrain from participating in any suggestions to slap Senator Bato dela Rosa with sanctions over his months-long absence from the upper chamber amid an alleged impending warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Lacson made the announcement on the heels of reports that the Senate is already in talks over whether or not to sanction Dela Rosa, who has not been reporting for duty since early November.

The penalty may include, among others, holding Dela Rosa’s salary ahead of the filing of an ethics complaint by former opposition senator Sonny Trillanes III in March.

Lacson, however, explicitly said he would not support any potential sanctions against his colleague, given that he was in a similar situation to Dela Rosa in 2010.

Lacson also went into hiding for over a year to evade arrest after being implicated in the Dacer-Corbito double murder case. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s 2011 decision to junk the charges against Lacson, clearing the way for his comeback.

“I will not be part of any recommendation to sanction him if it comes to that in relation to his long absence for one simple reason: I have no moral authority as I was in almost the same situation more than 15 years ago,” he briefly said in an interview.

This statement, however, was a retreat from the one he uttered earlier this month. Lacson said he was puzzled as to Dela Rosa’s prolonged absence, considering that the ICC warrant is still not out.

Dela Rosa has been absent from the Senate since Ombudsman Boying Remulla announced the ICC warrant in October.

Neither Malacañang nor the Department of the Interior and Local Government confirmed the existence of the warrant. Still, Remulla insisted that he had seen the document firsthand through a liaison from the ICC, though specifics, such as the exact date, were not divulged. 

Last week, Dela Rosa said he would only face charges related to his role in Duterte’s bloody war on drugs if the cases were filed and tried in Philippine courts.

Dela Rosa sides with former President Rodrigo Duterte’s allies and supporters, who argue that the ICC no longer has jurisdiction over the Philippines after the country withdrew from the Rome Statute, the tribunal’s founding treaty, in March 2019.

The ICC, however, argued that it still retains jurisdiction over the alleged extrajudicial killings related to the drug war that were committed before the country’s exit.

Dela Rosa served as Duterte’s first PNP chief, before retired police general Oscar Albayalde replaced him in mid-2018.

Records from the ICC showed that during Duterte’s presidency, he implemented the so-called “common plan” with his co-perpetrators, including members of the Philippine National Police, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, the National Bureau of Investigation, and high-ranking government officials.

Dela Rosa was also the signatory of the Command Memorandum Circular 16-2016, which outlined general guidelines and tasks of police offices, units, and stations in the nationwide conduct of the brutal anti-drug campaign, dubbed as “Project Double Barrel,” most commonly known as “Oplan Tokhang” under Duterte’s watch.