De Lima‘s tantrums

Davaowenyos have learned to just ignore Leila de Lima’s outrageous rage against former president Rodrigo Duterte, which has spilled over to VP Sara Duterte. Her tantrums of late have become creepy; she thinks Sara’s presence in Cebu amid the tragedy of the devastating earthquake should not take precedence over the budget hearing of the Office of the Vice President. In her fit of anger, she proposed a zero budget for the OVP. 

Her threats are not actually directed at the OVP but at the Vice President being the daughter of the former president she has long been wanting to indict on allegations of extrajudicial killings carried out by the Davao Death Squad which she claimed was created by Duterte.

It all started in 2009, a year prior to the 2010 elections. Then House Speaker Prospero “Boy Nogie” Nograles was in his last term as congressman. In like manner, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was also in his last term. The Hugpong sa Tawong Lungsod wanted then Vice Mayor Sara to run for mayor.  

In March 2009, before he bowed out as speaker, Nograles directed the Commission on Human Rights, then chaired by Leila de Lima, to conduct a probe on what he alleged were extrajudicial killings carried out by the DDS. 

Promptly, she organized a probe team, the members of which were all recruited from the national headquarters. She doubted the independence and integrity of Davao-based law enforcers, including the judges of Regional Trial Courts and even the Regional Director of the CHR, claiming they were afraid of or influenced by Mayor Duterte. 

De Lima virtually pitched tent in a downtown hotel for several months interrogating policemen, including Mayor Duterte himself, who had given up his supervisory power over the city police force to give the CHR a free hand in its investigation. 

De Lima filed a criminal complaint against Duterte in a Manila-based RTC, where she secured a clearance to summon people who were the subjects of investigations and to carry out diggings in an abandoned quarry where she suspected hundreds of EJK victims of the DDS were buried. 

For several weeks, De Lima and her team went on a digging spree but found nothing. At one instance, her team forcibly pulled out an inmate, Jonathan Balo, from the nearby Panabo City jail in Davao del Norte, whom they suspected had a hand in the killings.  But Balo could not point to any gravesite as he was oblivious of anything. 

Maybe from the sheer frustration of not finding a single piece of evidence, De Lima and her team cordoned off an excavation site to prevent local journalists from covering their activity. As expected, they exhumed badly deteriorated skeletal remains that looked like they had been buried there during the Spanish era. 

What De Lima and her probe team failed to notice was that someone had gotten through their barrier and took pictures of their discovery: a disintegrated skeleton and three pairs of license plates which had no signs of corrosion at all.  

I am not saying it was a case of “planted” evidence” but the Manila RTC, where De Lima presented their proof of extrajudicial killings ruled that the evidence was not acceptable and subsequently dismissed the complaint. 

That was in 2009. Leila was later appointed Secretary of Justice and in 2016, she won a Senate seat by the skin of her teeth. To her chagrin, her pet peeve was elected President in the same election. This time, she was joined by Antonio Trillanes, who held a grudge against Duterte for rejecting his offer to be his running mate. 

The duo had their axe to grind. At the Senate, De Lima presented a conman, Edgar Matobato, who claimed to be a member of Duterte’s DDS, and Trillanes, who was among those linked by Joemil Advincula, the hooded “Alias Bikoy” in the video titled “Ang Totoong Narcolist” which named members of the Duterte family as being behind a drug syndicate.  

Advincula was later convicted of perjury.  De Lima’s Matobato and his alleged “handler,” Arturo Lascanas, were also cited by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee for perjury but escaped imprisonment by fleeing the country. 

Now a congresswoman, Leila de Lima finds fault with every move of VP Sara, at whom she vents her anger towards former president Duterte. Somehow, she has become irrational as she censures the Vice President for attending to the needs of the victims of the killer earthquake in Cebu rather than attending the budget hearing of the OVP.  In an uncanny display of anger, she proposed to defund the OVP. 

Her outburst and impertinence did not merit a reply from Inday Sara.