SENATOR Leila de Lima appealed to the authorities on Tuesday to spare her married former driver and bodyguard Ronnie Dayan with whom she admitted having an affair while she was a government official.
“Huwag na ninyo silang pahirapan pa, mga kriminal man sila o hindi [Don’t make them suffer, whether they be a criminal or not],” the former justice secretary said in a statement.
After more than a month in hiding, Dayan was arrested in the surfing town of San Juan, La Union on Tuesday and was brought to the House of Representatives which issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to testify on his involvement in the drug trade from the national penitentiary.
“In the arrest of Ronnie Dayan, I am hoping that the authorities will treat him properly. That is also my call to the President for all the others who will testify against me, like [suspected drug lord] Kerwin Espinosa,” De Lima said.
Espinosa, believed to be the biggest drug trafficker in the Visayas, is the son of former Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa who was killed in a provincial jail after he issued a sworn statement implicating several government and police officials as his protectors.
“Don’t make a drama out of your desire to besmirch me. Just file the case in court and I will face you there,” added the former justice secretary who admitted having an affair with Dayan that started when she was human rights commissioner,
Last November 15, De Lima admitted her affair with Dayan and said it lasted for “a few years” and was borne of the “frailties of a woman.”
Dayan himself admitted on Tuesday that he had an illegal affair with De Lima. “It is true that we had a relation, seven years,” he told reporters at Camp Crame where he was brought after his arrest in La Union.
Both De Lima and Dayan are accused of being beneficiaries of the drug trade that was carried out from the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, an agency that was under the Department of Justice when De Lima was its chief.
But while she admitted having an affair with Dayan, De Lima denied that drug trafficking flourished in the national penitentiary because she abetted it.
“In my whole life, especially during my service in the government, I never benefited in any wrong-doing because I have never turned my back on the trust of the people,” De Lima reiterated.