[An MCT Opinion]
May senador tayong ilang buwan nang halos hindi pumapasok sa trabaho dahil nagtatago siya mula sa International Criminal Court.
Ang pangalan niya: Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa.
At may isang simpleng tanong na parang nawala na rin kasabay niya.
Sumasahod pa ba siya?
I asked myself that because I could not remember the Senate ever deciding to stop his salary.
No resolution. No formal vote. No rule automatically cutting off the pay of a senator who stops reporting for work.
Dela Rosa had been absent from Senate sessions since November 2025. He resurfaced briefly in May 2026 for a Senate leadership vote, then disappeared from public view again as authorities attempted to serve the ICC warrant against him.
Yet after all that, the salary question remained hanging.
WALANG “NO WORK, NO PAY” SA SENADO
For ordinary Filipino workers, absence has consequences.
One late can mean a deduction. One absence can mean no pay.
Minsan nga, sick leave na lang ang kailangan mo dahil may sakit ka talaga, pahirapan pang aprubahan. Urgent vacation leave na nga lang dahil may emergency sa pamilya, kailangan mo pang magpaliwanag, magmakaawa, o humanap ng paraan para hindi ka mawalan ng kita.
Then here is a senator who can disappear from regular sessions for months while facing an international arrest warrant, and there is no automatic mechanism to stop his compensation.
That is not only absurd.
It is unfair.
The people paying his salary are the same people whose own salaries can be reduced for being late. The same workers who can lose a day’s pay because they had to bring a sick child to the hospital. The same employees who sometimes have to fight just to use leave credits they already earned.
And when a senator stops showing up, there is apparently no automatic rule stopping his pay. The public is left relying on the senator himself to voluntarily refuse it.
Dela Rosa later claimed that he had already done exactly that.
THE SALARY WAIVER
Before Dela Rosa made that claim, Senate leaders had already publicly suggested that he forgo his salary while absent.
Senator JV Ejercito also appealed to him to voluntarily waive his salary and allowances.
Dela Rosa later said there was no need to ask him because he had already chosen not to accept his salary during his absence.
According to him, he did it voluntarily. He also said money received by his staff had been redirected to relief efforts.
Fine.
Then there should be records.
Where is the official document showing when the payments stopped?
How much had already been released before that?
What happened to his allowances?
Was there a formal waiver?
Where did the redirected money go?
Who verified any of it?
These are basic questions involving public money.
And this is where the real problem remains.
Even if Dela Rosa voluntarily stopped accepting his salary, the system itself did not automatically stop it.
The public still had to depend on his decision.
We still had to depend on his own claim that the money was refused.
That should bother everyone.
SHOW US THE RECORDS
A coalition of mayors eventually raised the issue publicly and questioned the cost of Dela Rosa’s prolonged absence.
The Senate should have answered this long before anyone had to ask.
If he waived his salary, show the date.
If the waiver was documented, release it.
If compensation or allowances continued, disclose that too.
There should be a clear public record.
Instead, we got uncertainty.
And while everyone watched the bigger political spectacle surrounding the ICC warrant, Dela Rosa’s whereabouts and the Senate’s handling of him, the money question quietly faded.
A new controversy arrived. Then another.
Soon the unresolved question disappeared from public conversation even though nobody had actually answered it.
So here we are again.
Sumasahod pa ba si Bato dela Rosa?
Dela Rosa says he voluntarily stopped accepting his salary.
Then show us the records.
Because this should never depend on whether we believe Dela Rosa.
It should depend on documents.
Filipino workers are expected to explain every late, every absence and every emergency that keeps them from work.
The least the Senate can do is explain where our money went.
[Note: I did my research on this but I couldn’t find anything to confirm if his salary has been stopped. If you are from the senate and you have verified information, please let me know. I will be more than happy to correct this piece.