Reader, I am obsessed with the case of Sen. Leila de Lima and her
persecution by President Duterte and his minions. You should be, too,
because if it can happen to the senator, the more it can happen to any
of us: victims of blatant abuse of authority, victims of persecution
through prosecution. Truly, this is exactly what happened during the
dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos (although he often didn’t bother to
prosecute). But wait a minute. We are not under a dictatorship now, are
we? So why is it happening?
And, it is obvious, the outside world is worried, too. The
128-year-old International Parliamentary Union (IPU), composed of 176
member-countries and 11 associates (regional assemblies), has made
representations that the senator should be released because the charges
seem baseless (false and incredible witnesses—not the IPU’s language but
mine—SCM), and if that does not happen, it will send someone to attend
and observe her trial.
Is the IPU bullying us, as Communications Secretary Martin Andanar
claims? Of course not. Its human rights committee makes a report every
year to the assembly about human rights violations against legislators
(members of parliament). Last year it reported 456 cases all over the
world. So we are not being singled out.
Why is De Lima being persecuted? She has been in police custody for
eight months and counting, for the crime of trading in illegal drugs.
But the Information offered by the Department of Justice against her,
and which was the basis of the judge’s warrant of arrest, did not
include any of the essential elements of that crime. It failed to
identify who the buyers were, who the sellers were, what the product
was, and when the deliveries and the payments for them took place. There
was even no presentation of the corpus delicti (in this case, the
illegal drugs traded). And yet the judge issued the warrant of arrest
(that’s gross abuse in my book). And worse, the Supreme Court, by a vote
of 9-6, gave its imprimatur. (This act evoked memories of the Supreme
Court in the 1970s giving its imprimatur—only 2 dissents out of 11.)
Imprimatur to what? To the violation of De Lima’s constitutional right
to know what she is charged with, and, as far as I am concerned, her
right to justice.
Let’s talk about that decision of the high court for a while. On the
face of it, all four Duterte appointees and five of the six Arroyo
appointees voted as a majority. And all five of the Aquino appointees
plus the one other Arroyo appointee constituted the minority. So on that
basis, it seemed the high court voted along “party lines.”
Be that as it may, to remove any of those nasty suspicions, I will
quote only from the opinion of the lone justice who crossed party lines:
Antonio Carpio. One cannot accuse him of bias: He voted with Chief
Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno (who had earlier nudged him out of the
chief justice’s post) and against so many of his long-time colleagues in
the high court. So what did Carpio’s dissent say?
In a word, his dissent was like a juggernaut that reduced to rubble
any and all pretensions of the majority. I especially admired how he
threw the ponente’s (and a lot of the majority’s) previous decisions in
their faces—where they repeatedly ruled that the Information must allege
all the essential elements of the offense charged. Yet in the De Lima
case, this was all ignored.
According to Carpio, “what is apparent is that the crime alleged in
the Information [against De Lima] is Direct Bribery.” So why do the
authorities insist on the latter? Simple, really. Direct bribery is
bailable, and illegal drug trading is not. Remember, Mr. Duterte wanted
her to “rot in jail.” See what I mean?
Anyway, Carpio easily disposes of every substantive (very few) and
procedural (very many) argument made by the majority. Says he: “Based on
the Information itself, the accusation of illegal trade in drugs … is
blatantly a pure invention. This Court, the last bulwark of democracy
and liberty in the land, should never countenance such a fake charge. To
allow the continued detention of petitioner under this Information is
one of the grossest injustices ever perpetrated in recent memory in full
view of the Filipino nation and the entire world.”
Free Leila de Lima!
source: Inquirer
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