De Lima’s karma
Karma, or poetic justice, was at work when former justice secretary and now Sen. Leila de Lima was charged in court with drug trafficking.
Drug trafficking is a nonbailable offense and this means De Lima will have to stay in jail while her case is being tried in court.
The misery that De Lima once brought to bear upon former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has boomeranged.
De Lima orchestrated the filing of plunder charges against Gloria in connection with the illegal release of P365 million worth of intelligence funds from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).
There was no evidence GMA personally benefited from the humongous theft of government money.
Noynoy and his most competent legal adviser, De Lima, probably knew that if ever, it was GMA’s husband, Mike, who may have been the recipient of the booty because the PCSO general manager, Rosario Uriarte, was his close ally.
They were also probably aware that Mike Arroyo could not be charged with plunder since there was no evidence against him. Also, he was not a government official.
Noynoy and De Lima may have known that Gloria and Mike were already an estranged couple and that Mike’s capers were unknown to Gloria.
So, if there was no evidence against Mike Arroyo, it was also unlikely that there would be any shred of evidence showing that GMA personally profited from the theft of the P365 million PCSO intelligence funds.
But the plunder case had to be filed in the Office of the Ombudsman, anyway, supposedly by other parties—namely, party-list Representatives Teddy Casino and Neri Colmenares, to satisfy Noynoy.
You see, Noynoy perceived—whether rightly or wrongly—Gloria’s hand in the partition of the vast Hacienda Luisita, the Cojuangco-Aquino estate, among its tenants by the Department of Agrarian Reform when she was president.
While Gloria’s plunder case was pending with the Sandiganbayan, she petitioned the Supreme Court to allow her to seek medical treatment abroad.
The high court granted Gloria’s petition.
But lo and behold! De Lima didn’t honor the Supreme Court’s order.
She’s probably the first lawyer and government official to disobey and disrespect the highest court in the land.
Clearly, she was following orders from her boss, President Noynoy, who wanted to hold Gloria accountable.
De Lima cries political vindictiveness by the Duterte administration for the drug trafficking case against her.
But wasn’t Gloria detained because of political and personal vindictiveness on the part of De Lima’s boss, Noynoy?
In the next few weeks or months, somebody might file a case for plunder against Noynoy for the release of hundreds of millions of pesos under the Disbursement Acceleration Program which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Noynoy and De Lima might even be confined in the same hospital while their respective criminal cases are being heard.
Call it karma or poetic justice, but what you do to your fellowman has a boomerang effect: You will end up suffering the same fate.
