If they’re looking for a bald-headed Senator Bato de la Rosa, maybe they should try to imagine what he looks like with a wig?

“Bato Bato sa langit

Ang matamaan

Ay huwag magalit.”

That was one nursery rhyme that kids of my generation never outgrew. If it sounds timely today, a hundred years later, you have to think that the missing senator is just as familiar with the words and their meaning.

A rough translation would sound like this: Stone, pebble or rock falling from the sky, don’t let it hurt no matter from how high.

What if the bald-headed senator were now sporting a wig, long hair or short but preferably longish — as long as there’s hair, would anyone spot him? Would his would-be captors recognize him from a distance?

If I were the senator, who was once chief of police and now every policeman in the Philippines is on the hunt for him, I would resort to every kind of disguise, including wearing a woman’s clothes, to deceive and elude every other man and woman who’s hunting for him, today’s most wanted man in the Philippines, wherever he could be or might be. He was last seen getting away, riding in Senator Robin Padilla’s car, supposedly heading for Makati.

Our cops are very, very respectful of women and they know how to handle a woman, whether victim, suspect, or perpetrator. And Senator de la Rosa knows this, like the back of his hand.

Yet it is not easy to get away with such a womanly disguise, given the senator’s avoirdupois, from the shape of his hairless head to the bulk of his heavyset figure. But given that 225,000 cops are on the lookout for him — many of whom were under him in the PNP — what’s not to try? As the great Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu teaches, the art of war is the art of deception.

For example, as Sun Tzu wrote, “Attack where he (the enemy) is not ready. Come out when he least expects it.” If the entire PNP is bent on capturing a bald Senator Bato, maybe they should also be ready to arrest a Bato-like suspect with plenty of hair, real or artificial, on his head?!