[In This Economy] When rule of law trips on the Senate stairs

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Investors, entrepreneurs, and ordinary households need to believe that the powerful will be subject to the same rules as the rest of us

Allow me to deviate a bit from my usual economic commentary and ponder on the recent horrifying events at the Senate, which left the nation aghast and speechless.

To recap, sitting senator, Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, wanted on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant, was allowed to slip into the Senate building, hide in plain sight, and scamper in a stairwell supposedly to avoid authorities believed to be implementing the arrest. In essence, the Senate coddled an international fugitive.

Then on May 13, gunshots were heard in the Senate halls, just as the ICC formally released their warrant and a mass of law enforcers congregated at the Senate grounds. The Senate’s own Sergeant-at-Arms reportedly fired live rounds near a hallway packed with journalists, staff, and civilians. That’s a scene that could’ve come directly from a third-rate political thriller, except that it actually happened in the chamber that is supposed to be the deliberative heart of the republic. Later, it was revealed that Dela Rosa was allowed to escape the Senate building in the wee hours of May 14.

I am no constitutional lawyer or security expert. But I think it is fair to ask the obvious question: How did we get here? How did a relatively straightforward ICC arrest warrant, the kind every signatory and even non-signatory states have processed without farce, become a hallway shootout that nearly killed reporters and bystanders?

No single villain delivered us to this moment. Our institutions, specifically the three branches of government, failed at multiple levels.

Three branches, three failures

Start with the Senate. Leadership had the simplest job in the country last week: hand over a colleague who has an active arrest warrant. Instead, the Senate became a sanctuary, complete with locked doors, turned-off lights, and an armed Sergeant-at-Arms whose discharge of a firearm in a crowded corridor will, I hope, be the subject of a serious criminal investigation rather than a sympathetic Senate inquiry into itself.

The rule of law cannot mean the law applies to everyone except the people sitting in this room.

Second, blame also rests on Malacañang. The contrast with the arrest in March 2025, under the watch of former police chief Nicolas Torre III, is glaring. That earlier operation was, by any reasonable standard, swift and clean: warrant in hand, custody secured, plane on the tarmac, minimal theatrics. Whatever one thinks of the politics, the executive then demonstrated that the Philippines is institutionally capable of executing an ICC warrant when the political will is present.

The absence of comparable decisiveness this time around is glaring. Why the uneven treatment? The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. owes the public a straight answer.

And then the Supreme Court. Courts can and do issue temporary restraining orders or TROs, but the bar should be higher when the underlying matter is an international warrant for crimes against humanity. In my humble opinion, the Supreme Court could have denied outright and let the substantive petition proceed on the merits. It chose the murkier path, and the country paid for that murkiness with uncalled for gunshots in the Senate halls.

An economic perspective

As I tell my students, the rule of law goes well beyond a slogan that politicians wave at ribbon cuttings. It is in fact one of the most robust empirical predictors of long-run prosperity that the economics literature has produced.

Put simply, investors, entrepreneurs, and ordinary households need to believe that contracts will be enforced, that property will be protected, and that the powerful will be subject to the same rules as the rest of us. When that belief erodes, investors flee, entrepreneurs look for other ways to earn money, and workers feel unsafe in their own country (and may just choose to leave the chaos).

The data bear this out. For instance, foreign direct investment inflows in the Philippines remain stubbornly below those of Vietnam and Indonesia, despite our better demographics and English-speaking workforce. Ratings agencies, in their typically euphemistic language, keep flagging “governance” and “institutional quality” as overhangs on our credit profile.

The Senate shootout only reinforces notions and stereotypes that the Philippines is a safe haven for wanted suspects and international fugitives (as depicted in a number of Korean dramas).

The shootout also serves to prove our critics right. When the institutions tasked with upholding the law cannot agree on whether to enforce an arrest warrant, that kind of political instability levies a tax on all of us, most painfully on the workers whose wages would have risen with the factory that never opened, and the Filipinos who don’t get to enjoy a level of growth and prosperity they deserve. The impetus for reforms also stalls when lawmakers stop legislating and start acting in an elaborate political sarsuela.

The press did its job

One bright spot, though, kudos to the brave  journalists who stood their ground in the Senate halls and did their work to inform the nation. They documented the horrific events and got the footage out. Several were within meters of where the rounds went off.

Usually, the romance of “running into the burning building” usually goes to firefighters. But this week, it belongs to the reporters who braved the gunfire while the senators who coddled Dela Rosa crouched in the dark, vlogging and playing the victim.

Till now, many questions remain unanswered. But the Senate events laid bare the continuing weak rule of law in the Philippines. Make no mistake: the economic costs will come due quietly but surely long after the news cycle moves on. – Rappler.com

Dr. JC Punongbayan is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan).

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