Senator Leila de Lima ,President Benigno Aquino III , New Bilid Prison,
Justice Secretary, Vitaliano Aguirre II , Liberal Party
MANILA, Oct 20 (Mabuhay) — Senator Leila de Lima on Thursday said the House of Representatives should now move on from the “circus of sex, violence and videotape melodrama” it has turned into after the justice committee released its findings on the illegal drug trade inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).
In a statement, De Lima said the House justice panel investigation missed its opportunity to unearth the extent of the NBP drug trade because it focused its inquiry on her.
“I would say, though, that I hope that, somehow, something positive would come out of all of these after all the public shaming and maligning that I was put through – not to my embarrassment, but, in truth, to the embarrassment of the House of Representatives, which was turned into a circus of sex, violence and videotape melodrama,” De Lima said.
“The inquiry has missed the opportunity to unearth the true extent and reason for the drug problem by being so myopic in scope, as it was obsessively focused solely on my alleged involvement,” she added.
De Lima, former Justice secretary, said she hopes that the inquiry would result into true and lasting reforms in the country’s correction facilities, and the approval of the necessary legislation, such as the BuCor Modernization Act, and true and lasting reforms in our correctional facilities.
“Sana nga lang ay maka-move on na ang House Committee on Justice, at ang House of Representatives sa kabuuan. I pray that they can now proceed with the conduct of business in a dignified manner worthy of the trust of the Filipino people,” De Lima said.
The House plenary on Wednesday approved the findings of the justice committee, which said that it “clearly established” the proliferation of illegal drugs inside the NBP when De Lima was the DOJ secretary.
The report said “sufficient evidence point to her involvement and possible accountability in these illegal activities.”
The panel, however, left it to the Department of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman to determine whether charges should be filed against De Lima.
DOJ has no business in conducting probe
But De Lima chided the DOJ, saying it has no business conducting any kind of investigation against her, whether fact-finding or preliminary.
The senator reiterated that only the Office of the Ombudsman has the constitutional mandate to recommend her prosecution, if warranted.
“The DOJ, in the person of the Secretary of Justice, cannot be complainant, preliminary investigator, and public prosecutor against me all at the same time since clearly, its own Secretary has already prejudged any case that might be filed against me with the DOJ,” De Lima added.
De Lima maintained that she is innocent of the allegations thrown against her.
She said it was only her, as DOJ secretary, who was able to lead the raids that exposed illegal activities inside the NBP.
“Malinis at payapa ang konsensya ko. Any allegation to the contrary is a brazen falsehood motivated by nothing else but a grossly undemocratic desire to shame me into silence about other critical issues, such as the spate of extrajudicial killings,” she said.
She said the findings of the House committee actually vindicates her as it did not recommend charges against her.
“That the House fell short of making that recommendation…is a Pontius Pilate act, where the Congressmen washed their hands of the despicable act of casting the fate of an innocent person to the judgment of a rioting mob, demanding a blood sacrifice for their entertainment,” De Lima said. (MNS)