Leila de Lima, a candidate for senator under the pro-administration Liberal Party, recently scored Rodrigo Duterte, the outspoken mayor of Davao City who is seeking the presidency under the PDP-Laban Party, for human rights violations allegedly committed by the mayor during his incumbency. While criticizing Duterte, De Lima reminded the public that she used to head the Commission on Human Rights and the Department of Justice. De Lima claimed that she had been probing the violations supposedly committed by Duterte, but she was unable to prosecute the mayor because nobody wants to speak up against him.
De Lima’s recent tirade against Duterte was calculated to attract attention in the news media days prior to the official start of the senatorial campaign. So far, de Lima is surviving in the surveys—she is somewhere around 10th place in a contest for 12 seats in the Senate.
Choosing Duterte for her target worked well for De Lima. Duterte is a frontrunner in the presidential race, and he even topped the surveys days after he announced his belated bid for the highest office in the land. This means that any attack against Duterte will almost surely merit attention from the news media. De Lima must be aware of this, and it explains her sharp attacks against Duterte.
Evidently, De Lima capitalized on both Duterte’s legendary notoriety as a disciple of instant justice, and the shortcomings of alleged victims of human rights abuses. This is seen in the sweeping allegations De Lima made against Duterte, and her subsequent disclaimer that the CHR and the DoJ under her stewardship were unable to prosecute the mayor due to reasons beyond her control. In other words, De Lima can conveniently accuse Duterte of committing human rights violations, without proof of the same.
De Lima’s camp maintains that the best evidence of Duterte’s alleged human rights violations is Duterte’s public admissions to the news media that he had ordered the elimination of many criminals in Davao City during his tenure as mayor. If those admissions constitute evidence against Duterte, why didn’t the CHR or the DoJ under her watch take steps to prosecute Duterte? Obviously, public admissions of notoriety, by themselves, are insufficient to justify a criminal prosecution. Under the Constitution, an accused does not need to prove his innocence because the prosecution has the burden of establishing his guilt. Current jurisprudence states that the prosecution must rely on the strength of its own evidence, and not on the weakness of the evidence of the defense.
Enough of Duterte. It’s De Lima who has a lot of explaining to do.
In July 2015, then Justice Secretary de Lima joined several government officials in a junket to the Hague in the Netherlands to attend the hearing of the arbitration case the Philippines lodged against Communist China regarding Beijing’s illegal expansionist activities in the West Philippine Sea. Since there is no immediate connection between the DoJ and the dispute in the West Philippine Sea, what was de Lima doing there in Holland? What practical purpose did de Lima serve that was important enough for the government to spend public funds for her plane fare, allowances, and hotel accommodations in Holland? Isn’t the wastage of public funds just as illegal as the abuse of human rights?
The backlog of cases in the DoJ is horrible, and De Lima’s numerous overseas trips, including the junket to Holland, contributed to that backlog. Petitions filed in the DoJ take several years to resolve, and if they do get resolved, the case is usually already moot and academic. Under De Lima, the DoJ ignored the postulate that justice delayed is justice denied. Doesn’t this unmitigated denial of justice constitute a human rights violation as well?
On another occasion, the Commission on Audit revealed that the DoJ, under De Lima’s watch, had illegally used department funds pegged for a particular project for another undertaking. Good grief!
Further into her incumbency as Justice secretary last year, De Lima found herself in the center of a controversy involving the Iglesia Ni Cristo religious sect and one of its ministers. The controversy arose after leaders of the INC suspected the minister of involvement in an on-line criticism of the top leadership of the organization. After the incident was taken up in the news media, the minister filed a criminal case against leaders of the INC before the DoJ.
When De Lima personally took charge of the case, the INC protested and accused the government of unwarranted meddling in the internal affairs of the organization. In particular, De Lima was accused of undue interest in the case.
After De Lima refused to back off, the INC invoked separation of Church and State, and its members took to the streets in protest. Their rally began infront of the DoJ headquarters along Padre Faura Street in Manila, and later transferred to the intersection of Shaw Boulevard and Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Mandaluyong City.
A standoff eventually ensued between the DoJ and the INC, with De Lima refusing to yield to demands that she resign. Malacañang inevitably intervened, and a settlement was negotiated behind closed doors. After the INC claimed that its demands were met, the rally was dismantled. Although De Lima kept her post as DoJ secretary, the terms and conditions that were agreed upon between the government and the INC remain a mystery today. De Lima is conveniently silent about the whole thing.
As the DoJ secretary, De Lima is expected to know what transpired in that negotiation. If De Lima did not bother to find out, that’s incompetence and irresponsibility on her part. If De Lima was deliberately kept in the dark by Malacañang, then that’s an outright insult to her, and she should have resigned from the DoJ immediately.
De Lima should explain to the people what really happened, and why she is running under the Malacañang’s LP despite what happened.