MANILA, Philippines — The US Senate should hire a “good” Filipino lawyer for Senator Leila de Lima if it wants to help fast-track the case of the detained opposition lawmaker.
Senator Richard Gordon suggested this Friday, after the US Senate passed a resolution calling for De Lima’s release and the imposition of sanctions on government officials responsible for her arrest and detention as well for the extrajudicial killings in the country.
“All I know is that our courts are functioning. If the Senate of the United States really wants to help De Lima, then they can hire a Filipino lawyer na magaling (who is good). And let the courts proceed faster,” Gordon, chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee, said in a press conference.
“Hindi ka naman pwedeng makulong kung wala kang kaso eh. And to my mind, it is of the interest of this country na ma-settle kaagad ‘yang kaso na yan,” he added.
(You cannot be jailed if you don’t have a case. And to my mind, it is of the country’s interest to settle this case immediately.)
Senate President Vicente Sotto III earlier reiterated that the US senators might have just been misinformed and violated their own laws when they passed the said resolution.
Meanwhile, Malacañang called the US resolution as a form of “bullying” as it believes that it was “misguided” by “erroneous premise culled from bogus narratives of President Duterte’s usual antagonists.”
De Lima, a staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte and his war on drugs, has been detained since February 2017 for supposedly allowing the proliferation of narcotics inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP). The senator vehemently denied the allegations and accused the government of fabricating cases against her.