President Duterte declined to react on Wednesday on the legal challenge of archcritic Sen. Leila de Lima, who has filed a habeas data petition with the Supreme Court to stop him from securing private details about her personal life.
The tough-talking Chief Executive maintained that his statements regarding De Lima’s supposed hand in the narcotics trade were just intended to explain the extent of the country’s drug plague.
“I don’t know what are my sins. So I would rather leave it to the court,” the President told a news briefing before leaving for Malaysia.
“If there are cases filed already, then let them be,” he said.
The President said inmates at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) were still involved in drug trafficking even after the series of exposés with the help of corrupt jail guards and other public officials.
He said placing drug lords behind bars was not enough to stop them from running their illegal business, likening their operations to that of the drug mafias in Mexico.
“Mine was just to make public… the corruption of the day and how drugs proliferate inside our penal institutions not only in [NBP], but in penal colonies,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.
“And to this day, they are still making money from the inside. Drug trafficking in the Philippines starts from the prisons,” he added.
He said drug traffickers should be “immobilized” because it was “not enough that they are in prison.” He did not explain further.