Senator Leila de Lima during her 2016 visit to the Inquirer office in Makati for a roundtable interview after releasing an open letter to President Duterte regarding extrajudicial killings.
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/ KIMBERLY DELA CRUZ
MANILA, Philippines — Senator Leila de Lima found it “impossible” for the organizer of the Maginhawa Community Pantry to have links with Satan, saying that Satan himself never leaves Malacañang.
“Imposibleng si Satanas ang kumausap kay Patreng, taliwas sa sinabi ni Gen. Parlade. Hindi naman lumalabas ng Malacañang si Satanas,” a tweet from De Lima’s Twitter account read.
De Lima is apparently chiding Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. for likening Patricia Non’s Maginhawa Community Pantry to “Satan giving an apple to Eve.”
Imposibleng si Satanas ang kumausap kay Patreng, taliwas sa sinabi ni Gen. Parlade. Hindi naman lumalabas ng Malacañang si Satanas.
— Leila de Lima (@SenLeiladeLima) April 22, 2021
“Isang tao lang ‘yan ‘di ba? Si Ana, si Patricia ‘di ba. Same with Satan. Si Satan binigyan ng apple si Eve, doon lang nagsimula ‘yon,” Parlade said an interview over One News’ The Chiefs on Tuesday.
Earlier, De Lima slammed red-tagging community pantry operations but said it was no longer a surprise to her since people cannot be “humane” under the Duterte administration.
The administration, according to her, is “scared witless” of the hope that these community efforts have sparked as this will further expose the government’s failure to properly address the pandemic.
Several senators recently sought to defund the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), of which Parlade is the spokesperson, amid controversies hounding the task force involving the red-tagging of community pantries.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III, however, said that officials making “irresponsible’ statements should just be replaced instead of defunding a “good” program.
The NTF-Elcac, which has been linked to a number of controversies involving red-tagging, was criticized for sharing social media posts saying that community pantries are being used for propaganda of communist groups.
But Parlade said they were “just checking” the background of those behind the highly popular community pantries to make sure that organizers do not have any other agenda.