Stand up vs sociopath serial killer – De Lima

MANILA, Philippines - With the looming prospect of her arrest, Sen. Leila de Lima called on the public and other sectors of society to let their voices be heard and make President Duterte accountable for the human rights violations taking place in the country.

De Lima branded Duterte “a murderer and a sociopath serial killer.”

She said Filipinos who do not agree with the ways of the President should speak out.

“I am calling out to our countrymen to speak out against our murderous President who should be made accountable for the crimes he committed,” De Lima told a news conference yesterday.

De Lima went on to mention one by one the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), the members of the President’s Cabinet, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) and the rest of the people in government with an appeal for each of them.

For the VACC, which filed one of the cases against her, De Lima asked when it would file “the biggest criminal case in the country’s history” against Duterte who, she said, had ordered the killing of thousands of people during his stint as mayor and now as the country’s leader.

De Lima criticized the VACC for having Ferdinand Topacio, a lawyer who has been defending drug lords and former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

For the members of the Cabinet, De Lima urged them to take the opportunity to save the country from a criminal like Duterte by declaring him unfit to perform his duties as president.

De Lima urged the IBP and lawyers in general to live up to their oaths as the defenders of justice and the truth and not ignore the reckless disregard for the law that is taking place in the country now.

In her appeal to the people in government, specifically the members of the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, De Lima said they should continue performing their duties in spite of the limited resources and the lack of moral ascendancy of the country’s leader.

De Lima clarified she was not calling for mass action against Duterte but rather for the people to care about what is happening in the country.

“I don’t want to be really pushing for those extreme moves, but what I am saying here is that hopefully the people will finally wake up and not turn a blind eye. Let’s not be indifferent to what is happening,” she said.

De Lima denounced Duterte for the lack of any principle in all of his acts as the country’s leader and that he does not care about what is right or wrong.

“This is called impunity. That’s his mind trip. That is the kind of leadership of President Duterte,” she said.

De Lima likened Duterte to the comic villain Joker, who assembled all of the criminal minds in order to spread evil in the country.