SENATOR Leila de Lima protested her innocence Saturday, declaring she is willing to resign from her post and even get shot in front of President Rodrigo Duterte if there is “real evidence” against her alleged involvement in the drug trade.
In a press briefing, De Lima also accused the Duterte administration of trying to fabricate evidence to implicate her and her driver-bodyguard, Ronnie Palisoc Dayan, in the exchange of drug money in the New Bilibid Prison.
“I am willing to resign, to be shot in front of the President if drug allegations against me are proven true. I’m pretty confident. I will stand by my innocence,” De Lima told a news briefing in Quezon City.
On Wednesday, the President called De Lima an “immoral woman” and an “adulterer” for having an affair with her long-time driver-bodyguard.
The President said the driver-bodyguard collected drug money for the former Justice secretary from drug lords in the New Bilibid Prison.
De Lima said Friday she opted to remain silent at first because it was difficult for her to be publicly engaging in a piecemeal explanation.
However, De Lima said there were “some snippets of facts, snippets of truths” in the statements of the President, but the bulk of it were distortions, exaggerations, and lies.”
De Lima, replying to reporters’ questions, said Dayan was indeed her bodyguard–but the alleged property that she gave to Dayan in Urbiztondo, Pangasinan, their links to the drug trade, and a rumored sex video “were not true.”
The closest admission that she can say about her alleged affair, however, was she indeed became “close” to her bodyguard, adding she does not want to go into details about her widely-publicized personal life.
“The Ronnie Dayan that they are saying, he was really my driver-bodyguard even before I was a private practitioner, before I entered government,” De Lima said.
Citing what she described as her unimpeachable sources, De Lima said there are people who were trying to “manufacture evidence” against her, saying some people are trying to convince convicts inside the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City to sign statements linking her to the illegal drug trade.
“They were trying to access certain convicts, and their motive was to link me in as a coddler, that I was a protector of illegal drugs, that I received campaign money during the elections, that Ronnie [Dayan] served as my bagman–that’s not true,” De Lima claimed.
“If they see any speck of dirt, they will link it to me. What if they succeed in digging dirt? They will say that these are the works of Secretary De Lima.”
While there were no takers at the time, she said she would not be surprised if they have already found a drug lord who is willing to speak against her.
The senator divulged that, around three or four weeks ago, she received an S.O.S. call from Dayan in panic, asking for help.
“[Ronnie] said he could not go home because there were persons hunting for him. Local police sources had told him to keep a low profile, your house could be raided and you made to appear to have a cache of arms, that you put up resistance. You could be killed or abducted,” she said.
De Lima warned President Duterte not to accuse or manufacture evidence against her that she is a drug coddler, saying no evidence can link her to the illegal drug trade.
Addressing the President, De Lima asked him to carefully look at the evidence. “If you insist [on the truth of] accusations that I was a coddler, or protector of illegal drugs, you will be confounded and I don’t want to happen that to you.”
She also warned authorities not to “touch Ronnie Dayan unless you have an arrest warrant.”
On Friday, whistleblower Sandra Cam tagged De Lima’s driver of allegedly collecting more than P5 million in drug money weekly from high-profile inmates inside the New Bilibid Prison, including gang leader Jaybee Sebastian and Peter Co, whom the President linked to the drug trade.
Cam, who had informed President Rodrigo Duterte of De Lima’s alleged affair, criticized De Lima for denying her links to the illegal drug trade, since her lover-driver was her bagman inside the New Bilibid Prison.
But De Lima the so-called pieces of “evidence” by Cam and the President were not true at all.
“I don’t listen to her,” De Lima said. “Whatever evidence you have, these aren’t true. They were fake, bogus, manufactured, fabricated, perjured.”
De Lima said she had wondered why Duterte was “fixated” on her, and came to the conclusion that it was because of her investigation on the so-called Davao Death Squad.
“I think he has not forgotten or forgiven me,” she said, recalling she had lectured him on human rights in the court.
“Whatever my mistakes to him were, I don’t want him to come into this point, that she ought to destroy me,” she added.