THE House is filing four complaints against Senator Leila de Lima, who defied its show-cause order that lapsed 72 hour after it was served, said justice committee chairman Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali.
“Senator De Lima showed her continued defiance. The show-cause order expired Friday and not a word from her,” Umali said in an interview Sunday over radio dzBB. “We followed the rule of law and we accorded her due process, which she refused.”
Umali said the four charges include contempt, an ethics complaint to be lodged before the Senate, a disbarment case before the Supreme Court and an obstruction of justice charge before the Justice department or a regional trial court.
All these complaints stem from De Lima’s advice to her former lover and alleged bagman Ronnie Dayan to go into hiding to avoid testifying before the House committee on justice, which was investigating the proliferation of illegal drugs in the national penitentiary when De Lima was still Justice secretary.
“We… observed inter-chamber parliamentary courtesy so we officially coursed the show-cause order through the Senate Secretary, who was in charge of the administrative aspect of transmitting it to the person concerned,” Umali told dzBB.
“She remained defiant up to the very end. In fact even when we served it, that’s what we heard from her pronouncements. In so far as we are concerned, we have done our job and… no one is above the law,” Umali said.
Umali said the ethics complaint will be lodged before the Senate as part of the House’s adherence to inter-chamber parliamentary courtesy and respect to the Senate as an institution.
“We are willing to submit to the Senate. We meet on their turf… Let them discipline their own member,” he said.
Umali said the House already has grounds to cite De Lima in indirect contempt and discuss whether or not there are enough grounds to cite her in contempt.
De Lima, he said, was already accorded many chances to explain why she refused to appear before the House committee on justice, of which Umali is chairman.
De Lima refused to take any of these opportunities, he said.
Umali said they would leave it up to the Justice department to effect De Lima’s arrest once the contempt charge was issued.
All these charges, he said, would be filed this week as House lawyers worked overtime over the weekend to draft all the charges against De Lima.
In the disbarment case, De Lima’s relationship with Dayan would come into play, Umali said, noting that her affair with a married man was a violation of her oath as a lawyer. Her advice to Dayan to go into hiding would also figure in the disbarment case, he added.
Umali said it was no longer the House’s concern if De Lima claimed she had not received the show-cause order because it was officially transmitted to the Senate.
“We couldn’t care less,” he said. “For us, our time of reckoning is when we submitted it to the Senate secretary.”