‘Fight PH greatest fight since People Power Revolt’—De Lima

Senator Leila de Lima. GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Amid a piling body count in the government’s bloody war on drugs, Sen. Leila De Lima on Thursday urged Filipinos to join what she called the country’s “greatest fight” since the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution that toppled the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

In her speech on democracy and human rights at the College of Holy Spirit in Manila, De Lima said the fight was not one against President Rodrigo Duterte or for her own benefit but a battle “in the Filipino people’s minds.”

“In my first few weeks as a senator, I called for a probe into the alarming rate of extrajudicial killings in our nation. Three months later, I am an accused drug trade protector, a man-eating slut who has had carnal relationships with every man that crossed my path,” De Lima said, referring to the President’s and his men’s accusations of drug coddling against her.

“I am here not to call on you to fight for me. I am here to ask you to fight the greatest fight our nation has faced since the People Power Revolution. But it is not a fight against the President. The battlefield is the Filipino people’s minds,” she added.

De Lima, who initiated the Senate probe on extrajudicial killings amid the administration’s antinarcotics campaign, was at the center of a congressional inquiry into the proliferation of drugs at the national penitentiary, which saw witnesses tagging her as an alleged recipient of drug money for her senatorial campaign.

“The greatest weapon of dictator is faceless dehumanized form of fear—in this case, drugs,” De Lima said.

De Lima said Filipinos do not owe their “blind support for morally reprehensible acts” to any leader because “no President is above the law” and “a President cannot rise higher than the people.”

“We have to fight back and reclaim our sanity, our moral compass, our social being, our very humanity and, most critically, our democracy… I see warriors for democracy, but not just any democracy. Not a democracy that is infected with the ‘troll virus’ and characterized with the loss of decency,” De Lima said.

“Kahit Diyos pa ang tingin n’ya (Duterte) sa sarili n’ya, siya ay tao, at tao ring haharap sa batas ng tao (Even if Duterte sees himself as a god, he is a human and he will face the law of man as a human),” she added.

De Lima called the administration’s way of handling the drug menace as “quick fixes” and a “lazy man’s first resort” in solving the problem.

“When all you have is a gun, and no knowledge of the law, all situations [are] a first-person shooting game situation: kill or be killed. Pero hindi tayo magpapaloko. Alam natin na katamaran, kakitiran ng pag-iisip, at kakulangan ng tamang pag-iisip ang tunay na problema (But we won’t be fooled. We know that laziness, close-mindedness and lack of proper thinking are the real problems),” she said.

“Kung war on drugs ito, bakit ang mahihirap ang namamatay, samantalang convicted na mga drug lords, ay naroon sa (If this is indeed a war on drugs, why is it that only the poor die while the convicted drug lords are at the) House of Representatives,” De Lima added, referring to the high-profile inmates who were granted immunity from suit to testify against her.

De Lima said it was wrong to equate her opposition to extrajudicial killings to lack of support in the fight against illegal drugs.

“I realized that it is imperative that we forget about taking sides in the sense of treating those who disagree with us as the enemies. In this spirit, I ask that we all leave behind the toxicity of attacking one another every time we disagree,” she said.

“We, as humans, may technically be animals, but we are not unthinking beasts. We are sentient. We are people, not feral animals,” De Lima added. RAM/rga

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