The Allegations   

Wrap your minds around how ridiculous, weak, or trumped up the charges against Leila de Lima were; Try thinking of it this way:  

Imagine charging someone with  kidnapping for ransom with murder.  But in that charge, there are no actual kidnappers and no killers; there is no mention of ransom money; the victim is not named, or is it known whether the victim is in fact dead.  

This analogy was used by Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio in his dissent of the SC decision denying Leila de Lima’s petition for relief. Justice Carpio called that decision “one of the grossest injustices ever perpetrated in recent memory in full view of the Filipino nation and the entire world.” 

The Accountable

De Lima and her team are  mulling it over, but from her interviews, she holds Rodrigo Duterte chiefly responsible. I should think his Justice Secretary then, Vitaliano Aguirre, as his main hatchet man. 

The Authorities 

Which “authorities” does Senator Risa have in mind who will respond to her call? Who would do a good job of identifying and holding accountable those who have wronged Leila? Who could make right this attack on our legal system?  Let’s make a list of possibles/probables, and then vet them. 

The Executive Department  

This is mainly President BBM. But given his behavior in the ICC issue (i.e., should the Philippine government cooperate with the ICC? A No? Then a Maybe? Then a No?) means he is protecting Duterte. Do you think he will call for a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may investigation where Duterte looms large? There are two reasons why he is unlikely to do so: One, Sara Duterte has not  been neutralized; and two, he will be opening the door for his successors to do the same thing to him. He is quite vulnerable in that regard.  So, scratch his name off our list. 

But let us suppose that the President does put the interest of the Philippines ahead of his own and gives the job to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Is the DOJ capable of doing a good job? 

The DOJ?

Consider, Reader, it was the DOJ

1. which filed the three cases against Leila in the first place. They used the testimonies of convicted felons (there is a paper trail that shows that then Secretary Aguirre visited Muntinlupa several times), and later asked for favored treatment for these felons.   

2.  which chose BuCor OIC  Rafael Ragos, to be one of their principal witnesses against De Lima. This is despite the objections of the NBI itself, because it believed that Ragos  was among the most guilty among Leila’s co-accused in the drug trade in Muntinlupa. 

3.  Secretary Menardo Guevara (now Solicitor General)  in 2019 ordered the reinstatement of Ragos as Deputy Director of the NBI.  (That is why I consider the recantation of Mr. Ragos, which was a turning point of in Leila’s case, to be a miracle. The government gave him everything he wanted, and yet his conscience won.) 

In effect, asking the DOJ to do the job would be like asking the policemen who killed Kian de los Santos to investigate themselves.  So, scratch the DOJ from our list. 

The Legislative Department?

House of Representatives?

They would enthusiastically conduct hearings on the matter. After all, think of all that free TV time and publicity, with elections just around the corner. But there is a big problem: While arguably not legally accountable for the injustices perpetrated on De Lima, their moral accountability looms very large, indeed.  

Consider the HR. They allowed themselves to be used by Duterte, calling Congressional hearings with convicted felons as principal witnesses, allowing the Justice Secretary to essentially conduct those hearings. Then they chortled and smirked at fake videos presenting de Lima pornographically, and generally denigrated her, a sitting senator.  

It is clear that they will do anything to access their pork barrel funds. 

The Senate?

How about the Senate? Unfortunately, their moral accountability in the de Lima case may be even greater than that of the HR’s. 

1. Remember the swiftness with which they closed ranks against their colleague de Lima because she had committed the crime of lese majeste –she dared to investigate Duterte’s drug war, and his Davao Death Squad. 

2. They closed her investigation willy-nilly and stripped her of the chairmanship of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, even though she had been Justice Secretary and Human Rights Commission Chairman and was most eminently qualified.  

3. Three years later, still on a witch hunt, they turned a hearing on jail reforms into a star chamber against Sen. De Lima.  

4. As a coup de grace, they turned down her request to participate in Senate deliberations by Zoom during the Covid pandemic – even though this was allowed to everyone else. The Senate – not all it’s members of course, but the great majority – had reached the lowest point in its heretofore relatively gloriously independent history.  

The HR’s historical desire to be the rubber mat of the Chief Executive is alive and strong, and now the Senate seems to have joined them.  Scratch the  Legislature off the list. 

The Ombudsman?  

Our last possibility is the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as a government official (as in Sweden or New Zealand) appointed to receive and investigate complaints made by individuals against abuses or capricious acts of public officials.  Sounds like finally, we’re getting somewhere. 

But the same dictionary also points out that “President Marcos has managed to evade, for the moment, the problem of what to do about the … findings on the murder of the opposition leader Benigno Aquino. To the disgust of the opposition and much of the press, he has turned the entire matter over to the Philippines’ ombudsman,” quoting from The Economist.  This refers to Marcos Sr.,, and we all know what happened to that plan. Moreover, the present Ombudsman seems to think that his job is to protect government officials from citizen abuses, rather than the other way around.   

Therefore, scratch him from our list. 

To summarize: “the authorities” that Senator Risa Hontiveros may be referring to don’t come up to scratch (pardon the pun).  

The Role of the Judiciary and the Filipino People

 It is good that Leila de Lima and her legal team are not depending on these “authorities”, in seeking redress. Instead, they are depending on the Philippine justice system to right the wrongs done to her and the rule of law.  After all, it did come through for her.   

But let us not forget that it took almost seven years to do so.  Justice delayed is justice denied.  And given how SC perpetrated one of the grossest injustices in full view of the Filipino people and the world, methinks Leila’s quest is a quixotic one. 

The Conclusion  

Is all lost then? Who else can Leila turn to for redress?  The answer has to be: The Filipino people. That’s us. I hope we don’t let her down – again.