Philippine Palace Backs $787,000 Manhunt for Duterte’s Drug-War Enforcer
MANILA — The Philippine presidency has thrown its weight behind a ₱50 million ($787,000) bounty for sitting Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, turning the International Criminal Court’s warrant for Rodrigo Duterte’s former police chief into an open national manhunt. The palace said on October 26 that the reward was a legitimate Interior Department and police operation. The message could hardly be clearer: the state that once elevated dela Rosa as the face of Duterte’s drug war now intends to deliver him to The Hague.
Police announced the reward on Friday and gave dela Rosa a week to surrender. Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said authorities had formed a task force, were monitoring the senator in the southern Philippines and had opened negotiations for a peaceful arrest. He also warned anyone sheltering dela Rosa that obstruction carries consequences.
“It’s time for the gloves to come off,” Remulla said. “It’s time to render justice to his victims.”
The ICC issued its warrant confidentially on November 6, 2025, and confirmed it publicly in May. Prosecutors accuse dela Rosa of crimes against humanity and describe him as an alleged indirect co-perpetrator in at least 32 murders committed between July 2016 and April 2018. Dela Rosa denies wrongdoing. He has largely disappeared from public view since the warrant became public.
The numbers behind the case dwarf the warrant’s sample of killings. Philippine police acknowledged more than 6,000 deaths during Duterte’s anti-drug campaign. Human-rights groups put the toll as high as 30,000, including people killed by unidentified gunmen whose methods mirrored police operations. The campaign treated poverty as suspicion and summary execution as policy. Dela Rosa did not stand at its edge. As national police chief, he commanded the force that carried it out.
That is why the government’s escalation matters. Dela Rosa is not a retired official hiding beyond the state’s reach. He is a sitting senator, a former police chief and a central figure in the political machine that normalized mass killing as public security. A government reward for his capture breaks the old presumption that rank provides permanent immunity.
The case also tests whether the Philippines can keep treating international law as optional. Duterte withdrew the country from the ICC in 2019, but the court retains jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed while the Philippines was still a member. Withdrawal did not erase the years under investigation, and a domestic political decision cannot retroactively cancel accountability for murder.
The bounty carries risks. Officials have described dela Rosa as armed and dangerous, language that can turn a lawful arrest into a lethal spectacle. A large cash reward can also invite informants, opportunists and rival factions into a case that demands disciplined police work. The government must capture him alive, preserve evidence and put him before judges. Accountability cannot imitate the violence it seeks to punish.
Yet demands for caution cannot become another privilege of office. Dela Rosa once led police who pursued poor suspects without the courtesy, time or protection he now receives. Authorities say they have spent months offering him space to surrender peacefully. His Senate seat does not place him above a judicial warrant, and political allies cannot convert evasion into due process.
Former president Duterte is already in ICC custody after his March 2025 arrest. His trial is scheduled to begin on November 30. Bringing dela Rosa before the court would show that the case reaches beyond the man who issued the orders to those who built the machinery and made it run.
The palace’s endorsement of the reward does not settle the legal case. It does, however, shift the balance of power. The badge, the Senate title and the Duterte name no longer guarantee sanctuary. For the families who spent years demanding an accounting, the manhunt is not justice completed. It is the overdue beginning of a process the drug war tried to make impossible.
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