Revenge. Vengeance. Retribution.
These are sounds that echo from the Philippine Senate, with two administration senators sneering at US senators’—Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dick Durbin of Illinois – call for a travel ban against those who put detained Senator Leila De Lima behind bars since 2017.
READ: De Lima’s jailers barred from US
The two initiated a move to ban from American soil Philippine officials involved in de Lima’s detention.
Speaking in Balangiga, Eastern Samar, Senator Christopher Go said he would make a parallel proposal to President Rodrigo Duterte banning the American lawmakers here.
“These senators should also be banned here in the Philippines. I will suggest to President Duterte to ban these legislators from entering our country for interfering in our internal affairs. These senators think they know better than us in governing ourselves,” said Go.
He said the US lawmakers’ ban proposal spat on Philippine sovereignty and the judicial process.
“It is an affront [to] our sovereignty and our ability to govern ourselves. It unduly pressures our independent course and disrespects the entire judicial process of the Philippines by questioning its competence,” he said.
For his part, Senate President Vicente Sotto III also hit the US senators’ move, calling them meddlers in Philippine affairs.
“How would they feel if a resolution is filed here saying senators supporting the move to impeach [US President Donald] Trump should be banned in the Philippines? They are meddling,” Sotto told a forum in Quezon City.
He said De Lima was “innocent until proven guilty… but you can’t have a US senator judge the case.”
He added: “It’s so far-fetched. Maybe he (sic) thinks we’re still an American Commonwealth.”
Meanwhile, Leahy criticized Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo for saying Washington was interfering with Manila’s affairs over a proposed travel ban against officials behind the imprisonment of De Lima.
“Every year, the United States provides large amounts of aid to the Philippines, and I have supported that aid. I assume President [Rodrigo] Duterte’s spokesman who defended the wrongful imprisonment of Senator De Lima does not consider our aid to be ‘interfering’ in their sovereignty,” Leahy said in a statement to ABS-CBN News.
“Our aid is not a blank check, and when Philippine officials abuse the justice system for the purpose of political retribution, we have a responsibility to respond.”
Leahy and Durbin filed an amendment in the 2020 State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill to deny entry of any Philippine government officials involved in De Lima’s imprisonment.
The US Senate Appropriations Committee approved the amendment Friday (Saturday in Manila), which states that “the Secretary of State shall apply subsection [prohibition on entry] to foreign government officials about whom the Secretary has credible information have been involved in the wrongful imprisonment of… Senator Leila de Lima who was arrested in the Philippines in 2017.”
Panelo earlier said the US Senate’s move was a “brazen” attempt to intrude into the Philippines’ internal affairs, saying it treated Manila as an “inferior state.”
