“De Lima was never a prisoner of conscience since she is facing a case entirely unrelated with her political conviction or cause.

The Liberal International and some other yellow-minded supporters of detained Sen. Leila de Lima have been stepping up their interference in domestic affairs that had incensed President Rody Duterte no end.

Last 28 July, the group issued a manifesto in which its call to Rody capsulated its entirety. It asked “the government of Rodrigo Duterte to release Senator De Lima and to drop the fictitious allegations made against her.”

The yellow liberals, who described themselves as political leaders and human rights defenders “from around the globe,” called De Lima a prisoner of conscience.

Earlier, the group had awarded De Lima a “Prize for Freedom” which is very ironic since the drug trafficking allegations against her, if proven, meant she was responsible for making millions of Filipinos confined to being dependent on the illegal substance.

The yellow-tinted world in which the liberals exist does not recognize due process or the independence of the country’s judiciary when it comes to their allies.

The Supreme Court (SC) last 6 June junked the appeal of De Lima to dismiss the drug trafficking case against her and affirmed the validity of her arrest based on charges filed by the Department of Justice.

The vote was a convincing 9-5 favoring the detention of the senator.

The yellow hound in the Senate, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, even made a privilege speech last year, exerting pressure on the Senate to “do the right thing” by ending the “injustice” on De Lima.

In return, Trillanes received a lot of brickbats from his non-yellow colleagues who rightly said the Senate has no business interfering with the SC.

De Lima was never a prisoner of conscience since she is facing a case entirely unrelated with her political conviction or cause.

The yellow twist is that the detention of De Lima was the result of her investigation of the Davao Death Squad as then chairman of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and later investigation of the spate of extra-judicial killings as a senator which supposedly incensed Rody.

The CHR ruling under De Lima did not even result in a prosecution.

The yellow senators calling for her release kept quiet when their colleagues Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. were similarly detained for most of the term of Noynoy on the scripted pork barrel misuse charges that De Lima as then Justice secretary oversaw.

De Lima is being depicted as a rights martyr and Rody as a villain which is expected from the yellow liberals since their ultimate goal is his ouster.

Groups actively calling for her release are New York-based Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International which have issued demands on several occasions that all charges be dropped immediately to pave the way for her release.

“Conveniently forgotten by De Lima’s backers was the brand of selective justice under Noynoy.

A more recent attempt to weaponize De Lima against Rody was a petition of Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, Senators Francis Pangilinan, Trillanes, Bam Aquino and Risa Hontiveros for her to be granted temporary liberty to argue the plea against Rody’s order for the Philippines’ withdrawal from the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court.

The yellow bloc claimed the senator is the first “prominent political prisoner under the Duterte regime.”

Conveniently forgotten by De Lima’s backers was the brand of selective justice under Noynoy where persecution of opponents is done in a predictable manner while yellow allies are shielded from accountability.

Rody’s administration had to fix the problems on drugs proliferation, the crime wave, the dilapidated mass transit system, the poor state of infrastructure, the Dengvaxia fiasco and the misuse of the budget as a result of yellow indiscretions.

De Lima who has been the gate keeper of selective justice is in jail as a result of fair and resolute justice.