Full of sound and fury
If only Shakespeare had not been born so much ahead of senator Leila de Lima, it would be tempting to suspect he had her in mind when he composed those famous lines that make up a part of this title. De Lima is now all sound and fury but has signified nothing. He keeps accusing people of going after her but has never ever substantially answered any of the accusations.
The accusations against de Lima are very specific. Drugs proliferated at the Bilibid National Penitentiary during her watch as justice secretary. She allegedly received campaign donations for her Senate bid from drug lords inside Bilibid. She allegedly carried on a love affair with her driver. Other than saying there was an element of truth about the last one, de Lima never really gave a substantial and credible answer to the more serious accusations.
Instead, she turned on her accusers and who she thought were behind them, accusing them all of complicity in a plot to oust her. As a topnotch lawyer (she was 8th in the bar exams), she should know that a counter-accusation does not really answer the accusations. If she cannot answer the accusations now, she better wait and answer them in the proper forum, where the accusations against her are ultimately headed.
For her to make so much inconsequential noise now only makes matters worse for her. She has to realize that she is now like a person who got caught in quicksand — the more she tries to trash about, the deeper she sinks into the quagmire. She is only attracting more attention to herself, thereby, exposing her to more aspersion and ridicule.
She should instead retreat into herself and reflect on her predicament. Perhaps, in this way, she can learn to be less arrogant. She can, for instance look back at how she has treated people and whether she has given them due process, which she now screams she is being deprived of. Her actuations only prove once more that those who are very hard on others are the ones who scream the loudest when subjected to the same predicament.
It is good, however, that she has called out former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, suspecting her and accusing her of being behind moves to oust her. Like the charges she once brought against Arroyo, all in violation of her rights and all subsequently thrown out by the Supreme Court, her latest accusations against the former president are all unsubstantiated and without proof, a figment of her disintegrating imagination.
It is good now that she has called out Arroyo (I wonder what happened to President Duterte, her initial suspect?), so people will recall their initial tussle and how cruel she had been in carrying out the task laid out before her by her boss Noynoy Aquino. It is good because people in this 85 percent Catholic country perfectly understand and appreciate comeuppance.
From Duterte to Arroyo and whoever she can think of next in her growing list of tormentors, de Lima is clearly at her wit's end. She is now clutching at straws. In fact, at the rate she is going, it would not be farfetched if she begins suspecting her own friends and party mates who I suspect will only be too glad to be rid of what is increasingly turning out to be a very cumbersome and unwanted baggage.
In fact, now that we are on the subject, I am beginning to get curious about the very prolonged silence of Noynoy on the matter of de Lima. To be sure, Noynoy said he does not want to interfere with Duterte, but there is more to that than just wanting to give the new president his honeymoon period. Noynoy does not want to mess with Duterte. But Duterte is Duterte and de Lima is de Lima. One is a hot potato, the other a pariah.
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