Lies, lies and more lies

“Not surprisingly, the US senators who drafted that resolution took the detained senator’s lies hook, line and sinker.

She desperately wants to keep the issue alive, but she will find out in time that it is a useless move she makes.

Detained Sen. Leila de Lima the other day went on an identifying spree as she named the persons, inside and outside of government, she claimed are behind her “political persecution,” following the proposal of the United States (US) senators’ denial of visas to persons she holds responsible for her imprisonment.

In naming her claimed “persecutors,” she intoned: “My persecution started with a daily public media demolition by none other than Duterte, using all his powers as President.”

“This was followed by a vicious social media campaign conducted by DDS (Duterte diehard supporters) trolls, led by Duterte sycophants Mocha Uson, Sass Rogando Sasot and RJ Nieto,” De Lima said.

She added: “Then came the House of Representatives investigation where criminal convicts were induced to testify against me in exchange for prison privileges and immunity, if not presidential pardon, as led by former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, former Department of Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, Solicitor General Jose Calida, Public Attorney’s Office chief Persida Acosta, Sandra Cam, Dante Jimenez, Congressmen Rey Umali and Rudy Fariñas.”

She included presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo, “who has concurrently served as the presidential legal counsel since the start of the Duterte administration and is also at the top of the list of her political persecutors because he failed to advise the President that violating her human rights and depriving her of her freedom are abuses offensive to justice and humanity.”

In naming some of her claimed persecutors who use social media, De Lima is virtually making it clear that press freedom can only be exercised by the yellow supporters who also have social media accounts and are trolls, too, but not for the Duterte “sycophants” who are exercising their constitutional freedom, which the detained Leila apparently wants curtailed by claiming them as another group of persecutors.

De Lima, without any evidence to back up her claims, even names the officials who were just functioning by following and implementing the laws of the land in investigating and charging her on drug charges in the courts of law. She also named the then Speaker, the then Justice chief, the Solictor General, even the Public Attorneys Office chief, the congressmen who held House hearings and heard sworn testimonies against her as her persecutors. What? Since when did Leila think that she is a sacred cow who can’t be touched as she is above the law? What humongous lies she weaves!

Her rights, human and civil, were never violated, as the laws were followed in getting her charged on drug trading in courts, as well as her detention, which charges called for detention without bail.

However, if Leila’s basis in claiming violation of her rights, as well as naming the officials in government, such as the then Justice chief, then the same should apply to her having been the political persecutor then, given the fact that she politically persecuted then opposition senators, the political foes of her yellow president, Noynoy Aquino, and charged them with plunder and detained them far longer than she is today being detained.

What she did was to file trumped up charges against them and even manipulated the so-called computer evidence. And Leila has the thick face to claim that she is being politically persecuted and names those who went after her and with their strong evidence.

The US senators’ move is useless not only because it is not a law, but a mere US Senate committee resolution for amendment to an existing bill, which may not pass the Senate, but also because none of the individuals, in and out of government, whom De Lima named are that desperate to step foot in the USA.

Even the detained senator, who, in her time, was her yellow patron’s top political persecutor, knows that none of these individuals she has named are that interested in getting into the US, resolution or no.

De Lima, who has packaged herself as being politically persecuted by the current administration, has denied the charges leveled against her and pointed to several officials behind her detention two years ago at the Philippine National Police (PNP) Custodial Center on drug charges.

De Lima is a vocal critic of the Duterte government’s war on drugs which, she, in her daily diatribe too many times, point to the administration’s extrajudicial killings of suspected drug personalities, which figures she knows are much too inflated to be true.

Not surprisingly, the US senators who drafted that resolution took the detained senator’s lies hook, line and sinker, as they didn’t even bother to investigate the charges and the evidence, by way of testimonies, twice over, from the government witnesses, prisoners and non-prisoners. They should ask then Criminal Investigation and Detection Group chief Benjamin Magalong. He certainly has a damning tale to tell about De Lima and how she hid the evidence of the drug trade.

But De Lima countered such argument, saying the two senators would not stake their names and reputations if they did not vet the circumstances behind her unjust detention and believed in her innocence and causes.

Said she: “It will not be presumptuous to assume that these US senators must have verified the information they received about my situation with key agencies of the US government i.e. the US State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (USDEA), and even the US Embassy here.”

Really? If they did, there would have been doubts raised by these senators and other key agencies of the US government, considering that the USDEA is hot on the drug trade.

But that’s Leila and her lies, lies and more lies.