Updated ,first published
Singapore: Gunfire broke out in the Philippine Senate, sparking chaos and compelling the chamber’s sheltering president to warn people to turn off the lights and stay low.
The prime-time confrontation on Wednesday night came days after the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) attempted to arrest a high-profile senator accused by the International Criminal Court of historical crimes.
Ronald dela Rosa had been holed up in the Senate, which is led by an ally, since fleeing from agents who arrived at the parliamentary complex after the unsealing of an ICC arrest warrant.
Dela Rosa, the former national police chief and chief enforcer of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs”, is wanted by the ICC for alleged crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of.
The intrigue deepened on Thursday, with confusion over who fired the shots and whether dela Rosa was still in the Senate.
State media reported that the suspected gunman was an NBI driver, but military chief of staff Romeo Brawner told reporters the Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms, which oversees Senate security, was responsible for the shots.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr was holding an emergency meeting of top officials on Thursday.
Shots were heard in the Senate shortly before 8pm on Wednesday (Manila time), forcing the complex into lockdown before it was evacuated. Video footage captured the sounds of rapid, close-range firing and screaming among members of the press. Reuters reported that more than a dozen shots rang out as those in the vicinity scrambled for cover.
“It’s f—ed up, man – we were in the middle of a shootout,” one of the journalists at the scene told this masthead.
There were no reports of casualties.
In the confusion afterwards, some believed that NBI officers had returned to the building to arrest dela Rosa, in defiance of the Senate president, and exchanged gunfire with Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms personnel.
However, NBI director Melvin Matibag denied his agents were present.
Calling for calm the same night, Marcos said: “It was not the government that did this. There was no instruction to arrest Senator [dela Rosa].”
Soon, rumours swirled in the press and on social media that the incident was staged by dela Rosa loyalists to create enough chaos to sneak him out of the building. Lawyers for the senator called this fake news.
Conflicting news reports citing senior Filipino officials on Thursday had dela Rosa both inside and outside the building.
Extraordinary CCTV footage from the complex on Monday showed the senator and staff running through hallways and up fire escapes in a bid to escape NBI officers.
Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano, who had just been elected with the help of dela Rosa, said at the time that his colleague was safe in the building and would not be given up.
On Wednesday night, Cayetano took to Facebook as events unfolded, posting: “This is the Senate of the Philippines. We are allegedly under attack … turn off the lights, stay low … follow the protocols.”
As the situation cooled, he posted again to say dela Rosa was safe and that authorities would respect a Supreme Court order earlier in the day giving the sides three days to comment on the merits of the senator’s arrest.
In a feverish week of politics in Manila, Vice President Sara Duterte, the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, was impeached again in the lower house on the same day as officers tried to arrest dela Rosa.
Her family’s allies have blamed Wednesday night’s chaos on the government.
The younger Duterte is accused, among other things, of misusing public funds and threatening the life of Marcos Jr. Duterte has denied all accusations and her lawyers described the complaints as “defective”.
If found guilty in the Senate, which is weighted with loyalists to her family, she would be removed from office and potentially barred from running for president in 2028.
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