Former vice presidential spokesman and lawyer Barry Gutierrez can’t help but be amused by Senator Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa’s plan to conduct a Senate investigation on the war on drugs because he himself is being implicated into the previous administration’s deadly campaign.
(From left) Senator Ronald Dela Rosa and former vice presidential spokesperson Barry Gutierrez (Senate, OVP/Facebook)
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Oct. 17, the former lawmaker and ex-vice president Leni Robredo’s spokesman poked fun at the senator’s call for a separate Senate investigation into a drug campaign wherein he himself played a pivotal role.
“Ang lakas talaga magpatawa ni Sen. Eh siya nga ang tinuturo ng mga testigo na may sala e, tapos gusto niya siya ang mag "imbestiga" (Sen. is really funny. He’s being identified by witnesses as one of the guilty parties, but he wants to investigate)?,” his post read.
While Dela Rosa was not mentioned by retired police colonel Royina Garma in her affidavit that implicated former president Rodrigo Duterte and Senator Bong Go as the ones behind the drug war killings, he was in the matrix she prepared and presented to the quad committee.
In the matrix, the senator was apparently “trusted” by both Duterte and Go to carry out the drug war by dealing with police officials who were given the reward money for distribution to those who would carry out the killings.
Dela Rosa already denied the allegations, and said he only knew Garma because she was close to the former president.
But alleged drug lord Kerwin Espinosa also accused the senator of being the one who forced him to implicate former senator Leila de Lima in the drug trade.
Duterte, Go, Dela Rosa, and others are being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity in the bloody drug war that mostly targeted poor drug users and drug peddlers.