An arrest warrant was issued yesterday for the highest-profile opponent of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, outraging her supporters who said the move was aimed at silencing her.
Senator Leila de Lima, 57, a lawyer who has spent nearly a decade trying to link Duterte to death squads that have allegedly killed thousands of people, faces drug trafficking charges that could see her jailed for life.
“I have no plans of fleeing and I have no plans to go in hiding. I will face all these charges,” a tearful De Lima told reporters at the Senate after a Manila court issued the arrest warrant.
De Lima said that although the warrant had been issued, it had yet to be served on her.
So she planned to spend the night with her loved ones before returning to the Senate today when she would likely be arrested.
She is accused of orchestrating a drug trafficking ring when she was justice secretary in the previous administration of Benigno Aquino.
But De Lima and her supporters insist she is innocent, and that the charges are trumped up to silence one of Duterte’s most vocal and enduring critics.
De Lima this week branded Duterte a “sociopathic serial killer” as she called for ordinary Filipinos to stand up in opposition to his drug war, which has seen more than 6,500 people killed since he took office eight months ago.
She said Duterte was mentally unfit to be president and called for the cabinet to unseat him, while referring to the “People Power” revolution that overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
“Now the time has come again for us to be brave and stand up to another criminal dictator and his evil regime,” De Lima said on Tuesday.
De Lima’s Liberal Party, which ruled for six years under Aquino, voiced deep anger on Thursday at her imminent arrest.
“The Liberal Party reiterates that it condemns the political persecution of brave administration critic Sen.
Leila De Lima,” it said in a statement.
“This arrest is purely political vendetta and has no place in (a) justice system that upholds the rule of law.
This is condemnable.
We reiterate that an arrest based on trumped-up charges is illegal.”
The Liberal Party also said it feared for De Lima’s life once she was arrested, citing the killing by police of another politician, Rolando Espinosa, inside a jail cell in August last year after he was arrested on drug charges.
The National Bureau of Investigation said the police who broke into the jail murdered him and that he was defenceless.
But Duterte said he chose to believe the police version that they were serving an arrest warrant on Espinosa inside the jail before dawn and the officers shot at him in self defence.
Duterte also railed at people for caring about the death of Espinosa.
“You have here a government employee using his office and money of government, cooking (illegal drugs) and destroying the lives of so many millions of Filipinos.
So what is there for me to say about it (the death)” he said.
In her brief comments on Tuesday, De Lima said she wanted to keep speaking out against Duterte but also signalled fear that her life was at risk.
“To all of you we ask for your prayers so I will be safe and secure wherever they want to jail me,” she said.
Duterte, 71, won the presidential election last year after promising during the campaign to eradicate drugs in society by killing tens of thousands of people.
He immediately launched the crackdown after taking office in June and police have reported killing 2,555 drug suspects since then, with about 4,000 other people murdered in unexplained circumstances.
Amnesty International has warned that police actions in the drug war may amount to crimes against humanity.
De Lima, one of the most outspoken critics of President Rodrigo Duterte, was a human rights activist before she joined the government more than a decade ago.
A lawyer by profession, the 57-year-old De Lima gave legal representation to members of underprivileged sectors such as fishermen, farmers and the urban poor in the late 1980s.
The senator’s political activism can be traced to the fact that her aunt is the wife of the founder of the rebel group known as the Communist Party of the Philippines.
De Lima became an election lawyer representing opposition politicians before she was appointed in 2008 by former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to be head of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).The outspoken De Lima first crossed path with President Rodrigo Duterte when he was still mayor of the southern city of Davao.
She launched an investigation into alleged extrajuducial killings and the existence of a rumoured group called the Davao Death Squad.
But she failed to find sufficient proof to charge Duterte in court,
although she was convinced that alleged extrajudicial killings happened in the city and the death squad sanctioned by Duterte existed.
De Lima was appointed justice secretary in 2010 by then president Benigno Aquino.
As head of the justice department, she ordered a sweep targeting alleged drug trade operations inside the national penitentiary in the Manila suburban city of Muntinlupa, where several convicted drug lords are serving their sentences.
When Duterte ran for president in 2016, De Lima, who was then vying to be a senator, was one of his staunchest critics, accusing him of human rights violations.
Duterte did not waste time to go after De Lima — who also won a seat as senator — when he took over the presidency in June last year.
He tagged De Lima as a protector of drug lords in Muntinlupa and labelled her as the highest Philippine official involved in the illicit trade in the country.
De Lima vehemently denied the accusations, saying these were all part of a campaign to discredit and persecute her for her opposition to Duterte.
But, in a congressional inquiry dominated by Duterte’s congressional allies, several drug lords serving their sentences in the national penitentiary alleged they paid her protection money through her lover and security aide, Ronnie Dayan.
They also alleged that they raised funds to support De Lima’s senatorial campaign.
The convicted drug lords said Dayan, who was arrested on Thursday on the same charges, collected the money for De Lima.
De Lima, who is separated from her husband and has two sons, admitted her relationship with Dayan, but insisted that she was not involved in the drug trade and all the accusations against her were mere fabrications.
On February 17, state prosecutors filed three drug trafficking charges against De Lima based on the testimony of the convicted drug lords.
Bail is not allowed for those facing such charges, so she would be detained while her case is being heard by the court — a fate widely seen as part of Duterte’s vendetta for her criticisms.
Philippine Senator Leila de Lima is escorted by the Senate’s security personnel after a Regional Trial Court (RTC) ordered her arrest, at the Senate headquarters in Pasay city, metro Manila.
