Posted on 12/27/2019 6:04:08 AM PST by DFG
She is not the only victim of President Duterte’s vindictiveness—others are former chief justice Meilou Sereno, Sister Patricia Fox and Maria Ressa—all of them tremendous assets of our country, all of them having to hurdle tremendous obstacles and difficulties to serve the country they love.
Leila de Lima first earned the ire of President Duterte in 2009 when he was still mayor of Davao City, and she was chair of the Human Rights Commission investigating the Davao Death Squad (DDS) activities. According to Edgar Matobato, a self-confessed member of the DDS, the DDS had planned to kill her while she was to inspect a DDS murder scene. The plot failed because she did not go deep into the place.
The second time Leila earned his ire was when he was already President and she was a newly elected senator. As chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, she intended to investigate the extrajudicial killings taking place in his war against drugs.
How did the President show his anger? At first, he didn’t name De Lima, but he talked about a female government official he was “going to destroy in public.” Soon after that, he released the so-called “drug matrix” purportedly showing that De Lima was at the heart of the drug trade operations inside the New Bilibid Prison, in Muntinlupa City. He later apologized to the other officials he had implicated, admitting that the administration had been “negligent in counterchecking.” Only De Lima was not exonerated—in effect, she was the only person left in the “matrix.”
What was the basis of this matrix? Well, in 2014, while she was justice secretary, she led raids on the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa and removed the luxurious environment of 19 drug lords—saunas, cell phones, television sets, etc. These drug lords were then used to pin the drug charges against her. No good deed goes unpunished.
The government apparatus was then weaponized against her.
Weaponizing the legislature: (1) The pro-Duterte majority in the Senate removed her as chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights. (2) The House allowed the secretary of justice to preside over its meetings, getting affidavits from the drug lords who claimed that she had demanded money for her senatorial campaign. And they were more interested in asking details of her love life than anything else.
Weaponizing the executive: (1) Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, apparently in exchange for the testimony of the drug lords, ordered the prison administration to give them back their perks. (2) During the preliminary investigation by the Department of Justice, he accepted the affidavits that the drug lords had executed for the House. (3) He refused to acknowledge that a government official of her rank should have been brought to the Ombudsman. (4) The first charge against her was illegal drug trading. Why? The drug lords said that she had taken money from them, so the charges should have been bribery. But illegal drug trading is not bailable, while bribery is. (5) Without proof of illegal drug trading, they “amended” the charges to conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading.
Weaponizing the judiciary: (1) The judges ordered warrants for her arrest without determining probable cause. The warrants were issued almost immediately after charges were filed. (2) The Supreme Court, her last resort, showed how anxious they were to please the President—when they could not even agree on what she was charged with—when they dismissed her petition.
In effect, President Duterte marshaled all his weaponry against Leila de Lima. An abuse of power. A waste of Philippine resources. Let’s stop this moro-moro. Free her. Now.
solita_monsod@yahoo.com
Duterte would have done us a favor if he pulled a North-Korea-style stunt, by letting the senators come over and then keeping them.
By the way, at this time a year ago, my wife and I were in the Philippines, visiting her family. We flew in to Ozamis City, on Mindanao, Duterte’s home island. The Ozamis airport is small, seeing just a few flights a day, with just about everything housed in one large building. Everyone waiting for the outgoing flights sits in one room, and they have a lifesized cardboard cutout of Duterte standing in the front of the room; I suspect that is to make sure everyone behaves.
It would be nice to ban these two traitors from returning to the U.S.
So can I.
And yet some FReepers seem to think Duterte is a model to emulate. Our Founding Fathers would puke.
> ...Leahy has a negative net worth.
And the Clintons were “broke” when they left the Whitehouse.
Well, yeah, that hurts their bottom line!...................
The exact same way Al Sharpton is ‘broke’..................
Leave it to a pair of dump-a-crap minority party senators to do WHATever they can to gum up President Trump’s progress
WHEREver and WHENever they can
Even on the international stage
She was using her driver to be the middle man between her and drug lords inside a prison. She even bought her driver two expensive houses. Never answered: Where did she get all that money?
Local wags put up a fake porno type video of her Schtupping her driver that made everyone laugh at her: Because she is about the only woman in the Philippines who is ugly.
Ah, but she criticized Duterte’s drug war, so the liberals and Europeans love her and think she is a heroine.
the murders of druggies are real, but you know, druggies tend to kill people: we had (3) home invasions with the people murdered nearby in our neighborhood, for example.
Now people feel safer and Duterte has gone from arresting druggies to the dealers to the crooked cops and politicians who get rich off of the drug trade.
Gee, I wonder why all these politicians are upset over this, but not upset about their fellow politicians who murder their rivals (my nephew was killed in the crossfire ten years ago when the mayor sent a hit squad to murder his rival).
She is an ex CNN babe who runs a good but very liberal news site called Rappler.
The problem? It was established with money from outside groups, which is forbidden here in the Philippines.
She then tried to say the groups gave the money as a gift to her, not the website, and so the tax folks asked her why she didn't pay taxes on the “donation”.
By the way: One of the guys funding the site is an American billionaire named Omidyar, who funded the media campaign that overthrew the pro Russian president of the Ukraine and put in the crooked one who stole everything in sight (not the guy who just got voted in by the way).
A lot of folks suspect Omidyar’s donation are essentially from the CIA.
When Duterte won, one candidate was a usual hack (who could be bought by the highest bidder), but another one of the candidates was a lady who lived near CIA headquarters and was a US Citizen but somehow got her Philippine citizenship back. One wag quipped that the election was between the CIA candidate and the Chinese candidate, since Duterte is openly pro China. (but the other candidates just talk against China while taking Chinese bribes and kickbacks an doing nothing, but that's another story)
Correct. De Lima is guilty as hell.
The anti-Duterte spin and screed is on par with the treatment President Trump receives in the media.
My wife is Filipino. Her family loves Duterte, and they hate the ‘YellowTards’.
Good comment
Just got this article fro a PI ex-pat group. It debunks the article you posted. It appears that we have media here that is trying hard to drive a wedge between the PI and the US. And it looks like Duerte has some anti-Trumpers in his administration also.
And not just those two. :^)
She was using her driver to be the middle man between her and drug lords inside a prison. She even bought her driver two expensive houses. Never answered: Where did she get all that money?
Link?
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