De Lima defends the US, as she claims that the US resolution does not infringe on the country’s sovereignty, that it is not unlawful.

The lawfully detained Sen. Leila de Lima appears to believe that the American senators and their utter disrespect for Philippine laws are her saviors due to their meddling though the 2020 Budget Act with a provision restricting the travel to the United States of those responsible for, and party to, her claimed “persecution” and “unlawful” imprisonment.

As she wrote in her daily diatribe, “My gratitude to the US Congress is overwhelming… This latest development signals the fact that impunity cannot last and that one way or another, justice will catch up with those who choose to do injustice to others.” She added that the development also signifies a solid recognition by the US government that she is a clear victim of political persecution.

Perhaps it’s more a case of justice catching up on her instead.

Leila is laughable! She bases her innocence and her being the “clear victim” of “political persecution” on whatever baseless claims of her “unlawful” imprisonment, as well as her claimed innocence, and even trashes the Philippine justice system, including our courts of law that are functioning according to law!

Both Leila and her American “saviors” in the US Senate are living in fantasyland if they believe that one, Leila is innocent of the drug charges and two, that the Philippine justice system will bow to the US senators and Leila’s delusions.

What is probable is that a harder line would be taken against Leila by the prosecutors, especially when the strong evidence against the now detained senator appears in a courtroom, as it certainly is not only the prisoners in the drug trading business that she, as Justice chief, is alleged to have engaged in, especially for her senatorial campaign. Some of her witnesses are hardly prisoners and even the former CIDG (Criminal Investigation and Detection Group) chief, now Baguio City Mayor, Benjamin Magalong, testified before the Senate on the highly “irregular” prison raid that De Lima kept Magalong, who had planned the “Cronus” raid, excluded and deliberately.

But it isn’t any wonder really for her exclusion of Magalong, since she was making sure that the hard drive, as well as the list of those on the drug payroll the prisoners had that directly linked her, was confiscated. She deliberately excluded these pieces of evidence from the list of confiscated items taken from the prison raid. That’s a sign of innocence?

Given De Lima’s deliberate acts to hide the evidence that can be used against her, she still has the nerve to portray herself as politically persecuted by the incumbent government.

She is more the persecutor — even of free speech and expression, what with her including the pro-Duterte writers in social media whom Leila claims came up with false claims about her. The irony of it all, especially since she, who claims to be a political martyr, has been free to write her daily statement to media that government never censors, and such statements, many of which are filled with falsehoods, are never censored, whether by government or the free media.

In Leila’s list of her claimed “persecutors,” it is amazing that she had listed for the US senators virtually everyone, including congressmen who held hearings on her. She also listed down the Justice chief who had filed a case against her before the regional trial courts. She fought the arrest and detention all the way to the Supreme Court, and the highest court in the land upheld her arrest and detention.

Yet these meddling US senators, both Democrats and Republicans, actually believed that with the Senate Appropriations Committee having approved the measure, the Philippines will now free Leila, with one senator tweeting, “We must free Leila now.” No way, not until her acquittal from the courts of law. And if the decision is conviction, Leila rots in jail!

It is highly doubtful that Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra will bow to the US government and the US senators. He said that not only does the US ban on government officials involved in the detention of De Lima contain issues of “sovereignty and non-interference among co-equal nations,” but also that he doesn’t “give a damn sh*t” if he is included in the US list.”

Guevarra called the US resolution “trash” and “unlawful.”

But De Lima defends the US, as she claims that the US resolution does not infringe on the country’s sovereignty, that it is not unlawful and that the US Senate resolution asking for her release does not violate Philippine laws.

And the nerve of her, talking about Philippine sovereignty being upheld in her Christmas message, where she says, “Let us demand from our leaders and our government to give the Filipino nation their due: to put an end to the brutal killings… to uphold our national dignity and sovereignty, to stop its vindictiveness and political persecution against its critics…”

What gall Leila has! She runs to the US senators and praises their clear meddling in our internal affairs and, yes, sovereignty, yet she dares speak of upholding the country’s sovereignty.

How dare she! But what she continues doing may take her a longer time in detention and possibly, when the prosecutors make their strong case against her, Leila may just finally join the prisoners in the New Bilibid Prison who gave her tens of millions in drug money.