De Lima dares Rody: Arrest me

MANILA, Philippines – Visibly exhausted and fearing for her safety, an emotional Sen. Leila de Lima dared yesterday President Duterte to have her arrested even as she vowed not to flee the country despite what she considered the administration’s relentless efforts to destroy her.

The senator said Duterte was venting his “intense anger at me” by using his intensified war against illegal drugs to persecute her and make her pay for launching an investigation into extrajudicial killings in Davao City in 2009 when he was still mayor. She was then chair of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

“Enough of this. Arrest me now! That’s what you really want. Jail me now – I’m here! Do what you want to me, Mr. President. I’ll wait for you,” De Lima addressed Duterte in a hastily called press conference at the Senate.

“Stop it! Stop this madness! I’ve been telling you, Mr. President, from the start, but you wouldn’t listen, that this will blow up in your face,” she said in Filipino.

Worsening her plight, she said, were “lies” whispered to Duterte by some “shady characters” around him with an axe to grind against her or were merely pushing their own selfish agenda.

She said in his desperation to destroy her, he failed to see that he is now “the laughingstock in eyes of the nation and the world.”

“I’m innocent. You’re already making mistakes,” she said.

The senator’s outbursts were triggered by new allegations by administration officials that she had instigated yesterday’s bloody riot at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) to silence the convicts supposedly set to testify on her alleged involvement in the drug trade in the national penitentiary.

She was also aghast at statements from Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II on her alleged P300-million profits from illegal drugs, and his threats to play her supposed sex video with NBP convict Jaybee Sebastian in the next House hearing on the NBP drug issue.

She said it would not only be Duterte but also the entire nation which would suffer from the issue’s fallout.

The President has repeatedly accused her of being one of the protectors of drug syndicates and vowed to put her behind bars.

The senator said her travails worsened when she spearheaded the Senate investigation into the rising cases of drug-related extrajudicial killings in the country.