Leila warns Rody: You’ll lose face

SEN. LEILA de Lima said yesterday she would give up her Senate seat and have herself shot in front of the President if true evidence linking her to the drug trade could be found.

De Lima warned President Duterte he would just lose face if he pursued efforts to pin her down for illegal drugs, because she had no involvement in those kinds of activities.

“I’m willing to resign, I’m willing to be shot in front of the President if there is real, I just have to qualify, real evidence—not coerced, not manufactured, not fabricated, not invented,” De Lima said in a press conference in Quezon City.

De Lima bewailed efforts, which she said she learned about from “credible sources,” to convince inmates at New Bilibid Prison to point to her as a protector of drug lords, and to make her former driver-bodyguard Ronnie Dayan appear to be her bagman.

In hiding

Dayan is reportedly in hiding, fearing for his safety because of alleged efforts to make him testify against her, De Lima said. She said people she had worked with were also being targeted.

She did not say who exactly was behind these efforts. But she said the President should carefully study any evidence against her that was presented to him.

Mr. Duterte earlier said that De Lima’s driver, who he alleged was also her lover, had collected payoffs for her, and that she had gifted him with a house from drug money.
Inmates won’t testify

According to De Lima, the attempt to get prison inmates to testify against her was launched the week after the May 9 elections, but she was told that none of the prisoners were convinced to take part.

But given recent events, she would not be surprised if “perjured witnesses,” who she said possibly could be convicts, would now come out against her.
Any evidence against her that would be gathered from witnesses would be “fake, bogus, manufactured, fabricated, perjured,” she said.

“If you will insist on your accusation that I benefited from drugs, that I was a coddler or protector or received money from them in the form of campaign funds or whatever, you will lose face. And I don’t want that to happen to you,” she said, addressing Mr. Duterte.
Short of saying the President was manufacturing evidence against her, De Lima said Mr. Duterte should confront whoever was supplying him with information and ask them to tell him the truth, or he would be the one to suffer later on.

No forgiveness

As to the reason for the President’s attack against her, De Lima believed he had not forgiven her for investigating him for links to the Davao Death Squad when he was city mayor.

She said she had been unable to file any case against him because none of the witnesses wanted to execute an affidavit.

In the case of her former driver-bodyguard, De Lima said she received a call from a panicked, emotional Dayan three or four weeks ago asking for her help. He told her he could no longer go home to his house because there were people hunting for him.

Make it appear he fought

“He knows someone from the local police who warned him to lie low as he was being hunted. Either his house will be raided and they will make it appear he had guns and that he fought back,” she said.

“Or he would be kidnapped because they plan to make him a witness or a state witness against his former boss, Senator De Lima,” she added.

Dayan told her he had seen “suspicious” people in his neighborhood, she said.

Since that conversation, she had not spoken to him, she said.

Arrest warrant

She said she did not think Dayan would testify against her. She called on the authorities not to go after Dayan unless they had a warrant of arrest.

De Lima said Dayan started working for her as a driver-bodyguard when she was in the private sector. He resigned in 2015 but they still communicated.

“He has gotten close to me, but as to how close, pardon me, I don’t want to touch on that because that is a personal matter. And again, I don’t want the discussion to veer into personal matters,” she said. TVJ

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