Preempting SC

Although the Supreme Court has not yet decided the main question in Senator Ronald dela Rosa’s petition — whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) still has jurisdiction over this case after the Philippines left the Rome Statute in 2019 — the search for him has grown more urgent as the months have passed.

That urgency has drawn debates among international law experts.

To understand why, one must recall how the case reached this point. The ICC issued the warrant secretly on 6 November 2025, and it remained hidden until last May, when Dela Rosa, who had been staying in the Senate, slipped out before dawn.

On 20 May, the Supreme Court voted 9-5-1 to deny his request for a restraining order, yet it said soon after that it had not ruled on the main petition.

Since then, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the police have been hunting him, and he is believed to still be in the country.

The key question for Dela Rosa is whether Philippine law allows his surrender before the Supreme Court issues a decision. Unlike former President Rodrigo Duterte, Dela Rosa remains in the Philippines, so the Supreme Court can still rule before anyone surrenders him abroad.

That brings us to the puzzle of the desperation, and here four explanations seem reasonable, though none has been confirmed by any official.

The first is that a surrender cannot be undone. Once a person is in The Hague, the ICC would not realistically send him back, even if a Philippine ruling later found that jurisdiction was lacking.

Associate Justice Ramon Paul Hernando made a similar point in his dissent, noting that Duterte was whisked away to The Hague the moment he was arrested, which left any local remedy useless, and Associate Justice Ricardo de Rivera Rosario wrote that no later ruling could cure the harm. If that is so, a late decision would arrive too late to matter.

In a special en banc session, the High Tribunal voted 9-5-1 to deny Dela Rosa’s application for a temporary restraining order or status quo ante order, which sought to bar local agencies from arresting him on an ICC warrant without a Philippine-issued warrant.

The second is the Duterte precedent. Duterte was arrested when he stepped off a plane, and the ICC confirmed all charges against him on 23 April 2026.

Officials have seen how quickly a case moves once the person is in custody, and they may wish to repeat that result.

Third, the Court is divided, and no one can be sure how it will rule on the merits.

In the May vote, five justices dissented and one did not vote. Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa wrote that a separate Philippine warrant is not needed for an ICC arrest, while Justice Hernando wrote that the domestic process did not authorize the arrest and that the ICC lacked jurisdiction.

The fourth is that the government has tied up its own steps to the Court. The Justice Secretary said agents would pause efforts to serve the warrant so the Court could resolve the issues, and the DILG said it was waiting to learn whether the warrant could be enforced without a local court order.

If the Court rules against the government, those excuses would be gone and the hunt might have to stop.

The Solicitor General told the Court that the country will never become a sanctuary for impunity and that Dela Rosa came to court with unclean hands.

Urgency must not override the Constitution’s limits on lawful accusations. A finding that the ICC lacks jurisdiction would not amount to a declaration of innocence, since the Philippines could still investigate and prosecute the same acts before its own courts.

The real contest is not between enforcement and impunity, but between two paths to justice, each subject to the requirements of law.

If the Supreme Court is poised to settle the question, the public deserves an answer before another Filipino is sent abroad.

An arrest carried out in haste, only to be declared unlawful later, would serve no one, not the government, not the accused, and least of all the victims seeking justice.