Leo Cloma posted a photo:

At an antique shop in Manila.

MANILA, May 15 — The Philippines vowed today to stop the chief enforcer of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war from fleeing the country to evade an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant.

Fugitive Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa barely escaped arrest on Monday when he sought refuge in the Senate building, but left unannounced for an unknown location on Thursday.

Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida confirmed Manila has received the arrest warrant for Dela Rosa from the ICC, but was waiting for the Philippine Supreme Court to resolve the senator’s petition challenging its legality.

“The Department of Justice will treat any attempt of Senator Bato Dela Rosa to leave the country as a mockery of justice,” Vida told a news conference.

Law enforcers and border officials were instructed “that if Senator Bato Dela Rosa would try to leave the country, that the appropriate arrest should be made”.

The ICC on Monday unsealed an arrest warrant against Dela Rosa, 64, accusing him along with Duterte and other “co-perpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder”.

Senate president Alan Peter Cayetano prevented government agents from arresting his political ally Dela Rosa on Monday, giving hime refuge in the building.

Dela Rosa served as national police chief from 2016 to 2018 during the early phase of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign and was elected to two successive six-year terms in the Senate in 2019 after retiring from the force.

The crackdown left thousands dead, many of them drug users and low-level narcotics peddlers, according to human rights monitors.

Dela Rosa has asked the Supreme Court to stop the government from enforcing the ICC arrest warrant and expressing preference to stand trial in a Philippine court if he were charged.

His boss Duterte was arrested in March last year, flown to the Netherlands on the same day, and is detained in The Hague awaiting trial. — AFP

MANILA, May 15 — Widespread power cuts struck the Philippines Friday, leaving millions without electricity in the tropical nation’s hottest month of the year.

The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) said rolling one-hour power outages hit parts of the capital Manila and the rest of the main island of Luzon from mid-afternoon.

These were due to “major grid disruptions” that affected transmission lines, as well as a maintenance shutdown of several major power plants, the NGCP and the Department of Energy said.

The disruptions are scheduled to spread to the central islands, leading to seven-hour power cuts, NGCP said.

“The public deserves a complete accounting of incidents of this magnitude,” Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said in a statement.

“We will ensure that all operational, technical, and compliance dimensions are fully examined and that appropriate actions are taken where warranted,” she added.

Garin did not say when the power supply will return to normal.

Luzon accounts for almost half of the Philippine population of 116 million, as well as economic output.

The outages are occurring in the hottest month of the year, when demand for air conditioning ramps up.

The power cuts occurred even though Philippine government agencies are observing a four-day work week, imposed shortly after the start of the Iran-US-Israel war. — AFP