Gunfire in Philippine Senate: Stand-off shows extent to which Duterte bloc would protect their own

MANILA – Gunfire inside the Philippine Senate. A senator holed up in the Chamber to avoid arrest. Then, by dawn, the senator was gone.

These extraordinary scenes that unfolded in Manila from May 13 to 14 were the clearest sign yet that the escalating feud between the camps of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Vice-President Sara Duterte has entered dangerous new territory.

The episode suggests that allies of the Vice-President appear willing to push one of the country’s highest democratic institutions into chaos to protect their political camp. It also turned the Senate into a shelter to protect fugitives, said analysts.

At the centre of the stand-off was Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, the former police chief who led former president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody drug war and is now wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

Mr Duterte is the Vice-President’s father. He was detained by the ICC in 2025 and is now in The Hague awaiting trial.

Mr Dela Rosa, whose nickname “Bato” means rock in Filipino, had been hiding from public view in the last months amid reports an ICC warrant has been issued against him, too.

But he resurfaced in the Senate on May 11, just as Duterte-allied senators moved to oust Senate president Vicente Sotto III, a Marcos ally, and replaced him with Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, Mr Duterte’s former foreign secretary.

The leadership coup was widely seen as an attempt to tighten the Duterte bloc’s grip on the Senate before Ms Duterte’s looming impeachment trial.

The House impeached the Vice-President on the same day for alleged corruption, unexplained wealth, and her assassination threats against President Marcos and others.

Under the Philippine Constitution, the Senate serves as the impeachment court that will eventually decide the Vice-President’s political fate. If convicted, Ms Duterte could be removed from office and permanently barred from public office, a potentially devastating blow to her 2028 presidential bid.

That backdrop made the overnight chaos in the Senate far more than a simple security incident.

As rumours swirled that the authorities were preparing to arrest Mr Dela Rosa, the Senate complex was placed under lockdown on the evening of May 11 after the Chamber agreed to place him under its protection from ICC arrest.

The atmosphere inside quickly turned tense, with senators attempting to continue deliberations on unrelated Bills, even as security was tightened and access to the complex was heavily restricted from May 12 to 13. Outside the Chamber, Mr Dela Rosa’s supporters staged a protest against the ICC.

Senators, staff, reporters, senior security officials and uniformed personnel already inside the building were still allowed to move in and out of the premises, but National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents suspected of carrying the ICC warrant were barred from entering the Senate.

The House of Representatives formally transmitted the articles of impeachment against Ms Duterte to the Senate only late on May 13, roughly four hours after gunfire erupted inside the complex.

By the morning of May 14, presidential spokeswoman Claire Castro, citing sources, said Mr Dela Rosa had slipped out of the Senate before dawn, although the authorities were still verifying his whereabouts.

Ms Castro said it was the Senate security personnel who first fired the warning shots on May 13 after spotting NBI agents near the Senate building, prompting the latter to respond with warning shots of their own. No injuries were reported.

But in a separate press conference on May 14, Mr Cayetano, the new Senate president, denied allegations that the stand-off had been staged to protect Mr Dela Rosa and Ms Duterte. He insisted that a group of armed men had entered the Senate complex – contradicting the Palace’s account of events – and said the Chamber was conducting its own investigation into the incident.

“You might say this is all drama. But we were having a caucus here, waiting for the articles of impeachment. You all saw what happened. I can’t possibly be such a master orchestrator that I could convince armed men to storm the Senate,” he said.

For many Filipinos, the scenes were deeply unsettling.

The Senate has long cultivated an image as one of the Philippines’ last democratic guard rails: a smaller Chamber of nationally elected politicians expected to act as a stabilising institution during political crises.

Instead, the Chamber was now being used as a shield, said analysts.

Political science professor Jean Encinas-Franco from the University of the Philippines-Diliman told The Straits Times: “What happened last night really indicates that they will do everything just to have some people escape accountability.

“Who will benefit from the chaos last night? Who will benefit from the leadership change last Monday? All of these point to the Sara Duterte camp and Bato’s camp. They do not only want to maintain the majority, but they also want to manage the impeachment trial proceedings.”

Political scientist Cleve Arguelles from De La Salle University in Manila said the Senate had become “nothing more than a house to protect fugitives”.

For him, the increasingly dramatic tactics suggested that the Duterte bloc now viewed both the ICC case against Mr Dela Rosa and Ms Duterte’s impeachment battle as existential threats.

“With the former president in The Hague, this will really just put the entire Duterte bloc into a corner,” Mr Arguelles told ST.

The crisis has also exposed the limits of Mr Marcos’ authority. The President insisted that police and military personnel deployed around the Senate had only been securing the premises, not attempting to arrest Mr Dela Rosa.

He also said he ordered NBI agents to leave after the Supreme Court on May 13 directed the government to respond within 72 hours to Mr Dela Rosa’s petition to block the ICC warrant.

“He appears quite weak,” Dr Encinas-Franco said of Mr Marcos.

The episode offered a glimpse into how quickly the Philippines’ once-powerful Marcos-Duterte alliance has collapsed into open political warfare, one that is increasingly testing the country’s democratic institutions.

Mr Arguelles said: “What was on full display to the international community is the capacity of some of our politicians to really sacrifice democratic norms and constitutional processes, the rule of law, just to make sure that they can protect one of their own.”