De Lima asks Duterte to end this madness

Senator Leila de Lima. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON

As she turns 57 tomorrow (Saturday), embattled Sen. Leila de Lima has two wishes for her birthday: for President Duterte to leave her alone, and to find a new love.

“My No. 1 wish at the moment, given all that is happening. I hope the President stops attacking me. I hope he puts an end very soon to this whole madness,” De Lima told reporters during her advance celebration in the Senate on Thursday.

“I am not asking that for my own sake, but it’s for the sake of my family, for the sake of the President himself, and especially for the sake of the country. I feel like the attacks have been coming one after another, no letup,” she said.

“I don’t have a love life right now. So that brings me to my second wish … . I wish I had a love life now, so I would have a partner to be beside me through all of these,” De Lima said, turning somewhat giddy.

“What I’m going through is not a joke. I’m bearing with all of these on my own because, as much as possible, I don’t want to involve my family,” she said, calling this time in her life “unimaginable, phenomenal and unprecedented.”

The ‘matrix’

De Lima laughed off the “matrix” that the President presented charting her alleged links to the drug trade in  New Bilibid Prison, calling it “garbage.”

“Honestly, over the past few days, I have been enraged about the allegations against me. But when I saw the matrix, I just laughed it off, and I pity the President. That’s why I hope the President pities me too and stops this. This is already madness,” she said.

She called the matrix  linking her to the drug trade  “almost laughable,” showing to the media a version of the chart that her staff had tinkered with using red ink to edit for  grammatical and style errors.

 ‘Where’s drug link?’

“Was it a joke? Like most of his jokes before, this latest one he will surely regret.  But yes, please amuse me at how his men have desperately tried to link me with the ‘Muntinlupa Connection’ flick. Where is the so-called drug link or links?” De Lima said.

De Lima, among the staunchest critics of the administration’s drug war, has been on the receiving end of the President’s accusations, including her alleged drug links and an unprecedented revelation of her intimate affairs.

Mr. Duterte has by far linked her to two alleged loves. The first was De Lima’s former driver, Ronnie Dayan, whom the President had accused as her drug bagman. She did not deny having been “close” to him, but vehemently denied  allegations of any drug links.

Most recently, the President named a certain Warren, a supposed motorcycle escort rider from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, as her current beau. She denied having any affair with the man, but confirmed he was part of her staff.