A group advocating for a clean government on Monday strongly urged former Justice secretary Leila de Lima to reveal the financiers of her senatorial bid in the name of transparency.
Joyce Doromal, secretary-general of Laban ng Bayan Tungo sa Malinis na Pamahalaan or Laban, said her group’s demand to De Lima is to once and for all prove that she never received funds from Janet Lim Napoles and drug lords from the New Bilibid Prisons.
Doromal stressed that they make it a point that De Lima whom they support is clean in her first attempt to enter politics, thus, her group is strongly urging her to reveal the names of her financial backers.
Napoles has been slapped with plunder charges in connection with the P10-billion Priority Development Allocation Fund scam, but was later on allowed by the Sandiganbayan to post bail due to weak pieces of evidence.
The anti-graft body’s decision was seen by many observers as a move that only shows that the crusade of the Aquino administration against graft and corruption was never serious after all—and De Lima knew this from the very start.
As a Justice secretary, De Lima launched a series of attacks at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, where she cornered and pinned down accused big-time drug lords at the time she seriously contemplating to run for a Senate seat.
During that time, De Lima claimed in a number of media interviews that she has no sufficient funds to finance her senatorial bid, but she would still pursue her ambition.
After few calibrated attacks on the big-time criminals, including publicly known big drug lords, imprisoned at the New Bilibid Prisons, De Lima abruptly put her campaign to an end for reasons not clear to the media and the public.
Doromal is hoping that De Lima would not take her group’s demand as “offensive” or an attack on her senatorial run.