‘Weder weder lang’

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March Fianza

“What goes around, comes around.” We saw how things happened in the past – the minority in congress filing cases against the administration and the latter filing impeachment cases against those they believed brought hardship to the Filipino people. Now, it’s the shoe on the other foot. Others call it “karma”.

More than a month since her arrest and detention at the PNP custodial center, Sen. Leila De Lima apparently has accepted the fact that she is now in jail due to her past actions that she claimed were “official.”

The previous position of the number one critic of President Duterte as Commission on Human Rights chair during President GMA, later becoming secretary of justice under PNoy apparently led her to a vulnerable situation today.

Although to her friends, De Lima’s detention now is simply political harassment because she continues to maintain President Duterte’s alleged involvement in the Davao Death Squad in 2009. This has not been proven.

It has been reported in the news that De Lima claimed she has been getting personal attacks from the President even while she was arrested for alleged involvement in three illegal drug cases.

She was arrested along with her former aide who was charged for soliciting millions of pesos and motor vehicles from convicted millionaire drug lord Peter Co to finance her candidacy in 2016.

But for the opposite camp not necessarily aligned with President Duterte, they welcome the detention of De Lima. One man’s misery is another man’s happiness. 

Today, we find De Lima detained a few feet away from the cells of Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla whom she successfully sent to jail when she was DOJ secretary. As for Sen. Enrile, he was allowed to post bail for humanitarian reasons.

The former secretary who was overall head of the DOJ denied charges that she received money from drug lords, instead she claimed that President Duterte was abusing his power over her.

On the other hand, critics say that the former DOJ secretary should now get a dose of her own medicine – and feel what it is like to be persecuted. De Lima sent President GMA to a hospital jail to the extent of disobeying a restraining order by the Supreme Court from arresting her at the airport.

In one news report the senator complained of “very foul” treatment from President Duterte that pressed former first gentleman Mike Arroyo to comment on Facebook that De Lima’s act of not allowing GMA to leave the airport for treatment abroad was a violation of her human rights. Willfully disobeying the SC TRO was “very foul” too, Mike Arroyo wrote.

Even former chief justice Renato Corona was not spared from the actions of De Lima who was part of the executive machinery headed by PNoy who was then immune from suit.

Forgetting the past, blind supporters sympathize with the senator. They feel bad for her but overlooked her spiteful attacks against GMA, the senators, and the chief justice. Even Sen. Ping Lacson could have landed in jail if he did not elude arrest. But life is “weder weder lang.”