Bato's request for family's Senate Mansion access, denied?

Senator Bato de la Rosa, who has been missing in action since November last year amid the threat of an International Criminal Court warrant, sought Senate permission to grant his family access to the Senate Mansion in Baguio City.

Senate President Tito Sotto confirmed this to reporters on Friday after a letter of request dated 12 March, addressed to him, was leaked. 

Sotto asserted that the letter was a “privileged communication” and was unaware of “how the media got hold of it.” Nonetheless, he averred that he referred it to the Senate secretariat, who, in response, said the request was denied.

Senare Secretary General Mark Llandro Mendoza attributed this to the ongoing renovation works in the Senate Mansion. Even so, senators are required to attend to their families, and should be given access.

“The Senate Mansion is undergoing repairs now, and the policy is the family must be accompanied by the senator,” Mendoza told reporters. 

In the letter, De la Rosa requested Sotto’s permission to use the Senate Mansion from 26 to 29 March, assuring him that the property “will be used solely to accommodate” his family during the CSAFP Cup 2026 to be held at the Philippine Military Academy firing range in Fort Del Pilar, Baguio City.

De la Rosa has gone into hiding since Ombudsman Boying Remulla announced in November that an ICC warrant is already out for him, though neither Malacañang nor the Department of the Interior and Local Government confirmed the existence of the said document.

Last month, ICC prosecutors named De la Rosa and another close ally, Senator Bong Go, as among the “co-perpetrators” of former president Rodrigo Duterte in the crimes against humanity tied to his bloody drug war. 

De la Rosa has been accused of playing a key role in the notorious anti-drug campaign as Duterte’s first chief of police, who signed the Command Memorandum Circular 16-2016.

The document outlined general guidelines and tasks of police offices, units, and stations in the nationwide conduct of the brutal anti-narcotics campaign, dubbed as “Project Double Barrel,” or most commonly known as “Oplan Tokhang”, under Duterte’s watch. 

The deadly operations saw over 6,000 deaths based on government data, though human rights group estimated the actual death toll exceeded 30,000, mostly from poor communities.

De la Rosa is one with Duterte supporters in asserting that the ICC no longer has jurisdiction over the Philippines, citing its withdrawal from the Rome Statute, the tribunal's 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 prior to the country’s exit, given that the preliminary probe had already commenced even before the country departed the treaty.