Court: Leila de Lima can’t join session via teleconferencing

MANILA, Philippines — A Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court had denied Sen. Leila de Lima’s request to participate in Senate sessions via teleconferencing from her detention cell, ruling that a person undergoing trial, though presumed innocent, did not enjoy all of a citizen’s civil and political rights.

In her June 17 decision on De Lima’s motion, Branch 205 Judge Liezel Aquiatan said the senator was correct in asserting that she could somehow still perform legislative functions but that she was already doing that.

Citing the case of former Rep. Romeo Jalosjos, who was on trial for child rape, Aquiatan said: “The trial court [in that case] thus correctly concluded that the presumption of innocence did not carry with it the full enjoyment of civil and political rights.”

De Lima, who chairs the social justice committee, had argued that barring her from participating in the Senate’s online sessions, hearings and meetings prevented her “from fully performing her mandate as a lawmaker who was elected by more than 14 million Filipinos in the 2016 elections.”

But Aquiatan pointed out that De Lima herself wrote in a letter to Senate President Vicente Sotto III that she had been performing her duties as a senator while in detention and had been filing bills and resolutions over the past three years that she had been in detention.

‘Not force majeure’

De Lima, a former justice secretary who also headed the Commission on Human Rights, has been detained since February 2017 on charges of drug trafficking at the national penitentiary.

The judge noted that the Senate had amended its rules following the COVID-19 pandemic to allow teleconferencing and other similar means only in cases when “there is force majeure or occurrence of an emergency, which may prevent the senators from physically attending.”

She said De Lima’s detention was “not force majeure” and neither was there an emergency.

Allowing the senator to participate in the Senate sessions, the judge ruled, “is no different from allowing her to attend there physically.”

“Allowing her to do so today would be tantamount to allowing her to participate even after the state of public health emergency,” Aquiatan said.

De Lima said her online participation “will not negate the fact that I am still in prison.”

“What the court permission can do, however, is to pay full respect to the mandate that I received from the Filipino people as a sitting senator,” she said in a statement. “Please note that there is no civil interdiction imposed on me by any court, thus, there should be no unreasonable restrictions on my rights and legitimate interests.”