Night of the long guns
Men carrying rifles flooded stairwells as senators disappeared behind locked doors and whispered instructions.
Men carrying rifles flooded stairwells as senators disappeared behind locked doors and whispered instructions.
The Senate was not built for gunfire.
Its hallways were designed for speeches, for slow betrayals wrapped in parliamentary language, for senators pretending to listen while television cameras rolled.
But on the night of 13 May 2026, the place felt less like the Upper Chamber of the legislature and more like a stranded bunker waiting for something terrible to happen.
Outside, JW Diokno Boulevard simmered under police lights and humid air. Protesters gathered in shifting tribes — Duterte loyalists, Marcos supporters, leftists, curiosity seekers, livestreamers chasing the next viral collapse of the republic.
Everybody was shouting; nobody was listening.
Inside, Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, once the feared face of the drug war, now moved through Senate corridors under the shadow of The Hague, guarded by allies and watched by those who tried to arrest him days earlier.
Then the noise came. First, the pounding of boots, followed by the steel shutters rolling down, and then the shots.
Staccato, loud, sharp and confusing.
Staff members ducked into offices. Reporters ran blindly toward the press room. Somewhere along the corridor, indigenous artwork toppled to the floor while lights flickered overhead. Men carrying rifles flooded stairwells as senators disappeared behind locked doors and whispered instructions.
In the middle of it all was the strange absurdity only Philippine politics can produce while armed men pointed guns inside the Senate itself.
Hours later, near dawn, the hunted senator was gone.
Just another convoy slipping into the dark Manila dawn while exhausted guards, police officers and journalists tried to explain what they had just witnessed.
By sunrise, the Senate looked normal again, but everybody knew something had cracked inside it.
