Junking De Lima petition, SC upholds Duterte immunity

The Supreme Court has denied Sen. Leila de Lima’s petition to stop President Rodrigo Duterte’s verbal attacks against her on grounds that a President could not be sued while in office.

The tribunal, however, said it was not denying the detained senator any legal remedy against Mr. Duterte, but only after he resigns or is removed from his post through impeachment.

In a decision dated Oct. 15, 2019, but made public only on Wednesday, the court upheld the doctrine of presidential immunity from suit in dismissing the petition for a writ of habeas data that De Lima filed in November 2016.

“The petition must be dismissed even without the President invoking the privilege of immunity from suit,” the tribunal said in a ruling written by then Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin three days before he retired.

The Supreme Court has “steadfastly held that presidential immunity remained preserved in our current system” even if this is not explicitly spelled out in the 1987 Constitution.

Constitutional remediesDe Lima was arrested in February 2017 on charges of conniving with drug lords at New Bilibid Prison a few months after she filed her petition.

She said the charges were trumped after she led investigations of alleged extrajudicial killings in Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs.

“Senator De Lima asserts that for every right violated, there must be a remedy. No one can dispute the validity of her assertion. We agree with her but at the same time we must remind her that this ruling will not deny her any available remedy,” the court said.

“Indeed the Constitution provides remedies for violations committed by the Chief Executive except an ordinary suit before the courts,” it pointed out.

‘Vocal critics’

“The Chief Executive must first be allowed to end his tenure (not his term) either through resignation or removal by impeachment. Being a member of Congress, (De Lima) is well aware of this and she cannot sincerely claim that she is bereft of any remedy,” it stressed.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court recognized that De Lima was “among the vocal critics of the crackdown” on illegal drugs that marked the Duterte presidency.

The court said her privilege speech on Aug. 2, 2016, calling for a stop to the extrajudicial killings related to the narcotics crackdown provoked a response from the President with a number of public statements denouncing the senator for “corruption and immorality.”

The President’s allegations about her arrangement with convicted drug lords and her alleged lover prompted De Lima to seek a writ of habeas data against Mr. Duterte, saying such statements threatened her life, liberty and security.

Unlawful acts

She asked the Supreme Court to order Mr. Duterte to stop collecting information about her private life, to disclose the foreign country that reportedly helped him get the intelligence information about her, and to order the destruction of the information that he had gathered.

De Lima, who served as justice secretary under the Benigno Aquino administration, said she was aware of the doctrine of presidential immunity from suit but insisted Mr. Duterte could not invoke it because his acts were unlawful and not part of his official functions.

Personal animosity

She said the President’s animosity toward her was personal and began when she was the human rights commission chair and he was mayor of Davao City.

With 13 of the 14 justices (one justice was on leave) in agreement, the court ruled that presidential immunity recognized no qualifications.

Presidential immunity “does not distinguish whether or not the suit pertains to an official act of the President. Neither does immunity hinge on the nature of the suit. The lack of distinctions prevents us from making any distinctions,” it said.

The Chief Executive is given immunity from suit to avoid distractions while exercising his duties and “any litigation, whether big or small, naturally serves as a distraction,” it added.