Aguirre on video: Don’t look at me

AGUIRRE

JUSTICE Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II and House members on Tuesday backed off from a much-criticized plan to play a supposed sex tape of Sen. Leila de Lima in a committee hearing on drug activities at the national penitentiary this week.

“I was not the one forcing the showing of the video. Actually it was the call of the committee,” Aguirre told reporters.

Aguirre, who last week threatened to present the supposed video of De Lima and her driver Ronnie Dayan at a hearing, admitted he was actually not in a position to do so.

An independent review of the tape, including by the Inquirer, showed the clip had been taken from a porn site and featured another woman, not the senator.

“Not that it’s not material evidence, it is still very material. What I’m saying is there’s already too much evidence establishing their relationship,” Aguirre said.

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, after giving the green light to show the video, also appeared to change his tune and said he would be leaving it to the House justice committee to decide on the sex tape.

De Lima, one of the fiercest critics of President Duterte, is at the center of the House inquiry on her alleged connection to drug lords at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) during her term as justice secretary in the previous administration.

Aguirre had said the sex tape would have a “big significance” in establishing De Lima’s intimate relationship with Dayan, who allegedly served as her collector of payoffs from Bilibid drug lords.

He said the video would help to establish how Dayan was allowed access into Bilibid, and ultimately collected the money from drug lords. But he admitted on Tuesday that he actually was not in possession of any video.

The inquiry by the House justice committee on the drug proliferation at the NBP resumes on Thursday.

Opposition Rep. Tom Villarin said he believed the attacks on De Lima would continue even as it appeared she may have won a reprieve.

“Definitely they would still continue to attack the good senator. That won’t stop because we have seen that there’s a trend to silence the opposition,” Villarin said, adding that he believed the administration might just have something else to raise against De Lima.

Villarin said the sex video was obviously “fake… which means the public was taken for a ride.”

Old boy’s club

Meanwhile, Sen. Risa Hontiveros led calls by women senators to stop the video showing, likening the House to an “old boy’s club.”

She filed a resolution condemning the misogyny and sexism at the House, and warned that showing the video not only violated inter-parliamentary courtesy but was against the law. Other signatories to the resolution were Senators Grace Poe, Loren Legarda, Cynthia Villar and Nancy Binay.

“It is a blow to our collective struggle to uplift the dignity of the woman, respect her agency and her autonomy over her own body, and is a form of slut-shaming that will not set a good example for the country,” the resolution said.

“At its worst and ugliest, this Old Boy’s Club in the Philippines seeks to shame a woman senator into silence by threatening the release of a video purported to capture her in a sexual act,” Hontiveros said, noting that it was meant to “silence” De Lima. With reports from Nikko Dizon and Jeannette I. Andrade