Desperation shows

“She has failed to disprove these drug charges against her as she depends on her contacts in the human rights groups here and abroad to proclaim her innocence.

With the news that her former Bureau of Corrections (BuCor)’s officer-in-charge (OIC) Rafael Ragos is now back working at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), detained Sen. Leila de Lima lashed out at his return, claiming it was his reward for implicating her in the illegal drug trade in the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

De Lima had always objected to Ragos’ inclusion as a government witness against her in the drug charges, knowing that her former OIC, who was her pick and whom she trusted, has strong personal knowledge of her having received the drug money from the prisoners, as it was Ragos himself who had delivered the millions in drug money at least twice to her home in Parañaque.

The detained senator claimed that Ragos’ recent appointment was his reward from the President, stressing that this serves as the “best example” of how Duterte uses the rewards system to encourage individuals to falsely testify against her.

As is her wont, Leila went into theatrics again, claiming that Ragos knows that his testimonies against her before the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Muntinlupa court are lies, as she claimed her former OIC knows that his lie is “a vital thread in this administration’s fabricated tapestry.”

De Lima conveniently forgets the fact that when she was the Justice secretary of her yellow patron, Noynoy Aquino, she ensured the grant of immunity to a thief, a crook and a perjurer to serve as government witness against opposition senators. Her push for her witnesses’ grant of immunity is, to use her own words, the “best example” of how she uses such perjurers and crooks to get her yellow president’s political foes jailed despite a clear lack of evidence.

All De Lima seems to do, in defending herself, is to keep on claiming that the charges filed against her are trumped up, yet she has failed to disprove these drug charges against her as she depends on her contacts in the human rights groups here and abroad to proclaim her innocence. These same groups swallow her wails and claims of innocence hook, line and sinker.

The big problem with these groups, however, is the fact that they have lost a lot of their credibility, as they gobble up the lies Leila and her yellows spew.

Her latest propaganda spiel had her calling the move to reinstate Ragos to the NBI “questionable,” pointing out that his return to his old post shows the desperation of the Duterte administration to pin her down on what she called politically-motivated and trumped-up illegal drug charges.

It is not just Ragos and his testimony alone that will pin the detained senator on her drug charges. Even Benjamin Magalong, the former Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) chief, has testified before the Senate that the raid on the NBP that was conducted by De Lima deliberately excluded him and the CIDG for her to get rid of what could be called incriminating evidence that could point to her being an active participant in the drug trade.

It will be recalled that Magalong, during a Senate hearing, testified that hard drives and ledgers contained all the illegal drug business, as well as the names of those on the take and how much the recipients got, all of which Magalong had disclosed in his Cronus raid plan.

Clearly, these pieces of hard evidence did not appear in the list of confiscated items taken from the raid. This probably explains why these were seized during the raid but were not listed or given up by De Lima. The evidence would not only clearly prove just what she had received and from whom by way of monetary gains, but also would have been concrete proof that could have been used against drug lords.

Yet De Lima claims that Duterte is desperate over her case, which is a big laugh, considering that the government’s drug case is pretty strong against her, given the number of witnesses. It is she who is pretty desperate over her case, knowing that she can rot in jail.

She can’t even explain why she had excluded Magalong and the CIDG from the raid, and why she, the leader of the raid, kept the hard evidence by way of hard drives, ledgers and other important targets that were listed in the Cronus planned raid, and even where they were located and kept, yet were not part of the list of confiscated items submitted by Leila. Why?

Leila can’t explain this big omission on her part, and all she can claim is that she is innocent and that everything else is a lie.

Perhaps all the accusations are true, and her defense may just be pure lies.