THE ruling PDP Laban party on Monday blasted its losing senatorial candidate Sandra Cam for accusing Senate President Aquilino Pimentel of protecting his former election lawyer, Senator Leila De Lima, over her alleged links to illegal drugs, said Abbin Dalhani, PDP Laban’s president for the National Capital Region president.
Dalhani also told Cam to stop dragging others down with her if she was just riding on the issue of illegal drugs for her own publicity. He also slammed Cam for being inconsistent in her statements.
In the May elections this year, Cam ran for senator under the ticket of President Rodrigo Duterte, the national chairman of PDP Laban and of which Pimentel is president.
De Lima was Pimentel’s lawyer in the election protest he filed against Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, whom he accused of cheating in the 2010 senatorial elections.
Dalhani defended Pimentel from Cam’s statements that the Senate president had been protecting De Lima.
Duterte has accused De Lima of protecting and coddling the drug lords in the New Bilibid Prison in Muntilupa City.
He has also accused De Lima’s boyfriend Ronnie Palisoc Dayan of collecting drug money for her during the last elections.
De Lima has strongly denied any involvement in illegal drugs but has kept mum on her supposed love affair with Dayan, whom Duterte said started De Lima’s involvement in the illicit drug trade.
Cam earlier accused Pimentel and then Senate President Franklin Drilon and incumbent House Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas of preventing her from exposing the alleged drug links of De Lima, then Justice secretary, during the deliberations of the Commission on Appointments in June 2014.
“Cam said she was for Duterte but joined UNA. She said she knew as early as 2011 about the links of Senator De Lima and the drug lords in Bilibid, but she did not say anything in the 2014 hearing. She said she was blocked from speaking and five minutes was all she needed, but she was given 30 minutes and still she said nothing,” read the statement issued by PDP-Laban.
CA Secretary Hector Villacorta said that, based on the record and transcript of the CA deliberations, Cam was given ample time to expose the alleged shabu factory inside the NBP.
“The fact that she was able to speak in the CA shows nobody blocked her from speaking or testifying during the confirmation proceedings against Secretary De Lima,” Villacorta said.