De Lima lashes at Speaker, vows to face her detractors

Senator Leila De Lima during the Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs Joint with the Committee on Justice and Human Right probe on killing Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. at the Session Hall of Senate, Pasay City.INQUIRER PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES

Look in the mirror and see who the real liars are.

With those words, Sen. Leila de Lima on Thursday struck back at Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, other members of the House of Representatives and government officials who were trying to link her to the illegal drug trade after she criticized President Duterte’s brutal campaign against narcotics.

De Lima also said she would face her detractors soon, after her former driver and lover, Ronnie Dayan, testified in a House hearing on Thursday to her taking payoff from confessed drug kingpin Kerwin Espinosa.

‘Serial liar’

In a television interview on Wednesday night, Alvarez, Mr. Duterte’s right-hand man in the House, called De Lima a “serial liar” for denying allegations that she took payoffs from convicted drug lords serving their sentences at New Bilibid Prison (NBP) and P8 million from Espinosa.

“I admire Senator De Lima. She is really good at lying. I think she is really a serial liar,” Alvarez said.

He said that while there were inconsistencies between the testimony of witnesses in the House inquiry into the drug trade at NBP and Espinosa’s statements at the Senate on Wednesday, all underscored a common point: De Lima took payoffs from the drug trade.

While such accusations had become daily breakfast fare for her, De Lima maintained  all were fabrications and said Alvarez was simply parroting his principal, “Lord President Duterte.”

“This statement just shows how narrow-minded House Speaker Alvarez is. This also affirms how the leader of the House of Representatives has already prejudged me, even before the conduct of the [farcical] investigation in ‘aid of legislation’ on the proliferation of illegal drugs at Bilibid,” De Lima said in a statement.

‘Look in the mirror’

“Before Mr. Alvarez speaks, and before others like him in the House and the Executive do, they should try to look in the mirror, and they will see who is lewd, who lacks respect for women, and who are the true liars,” she said.

De Lima noted that Alvarez had long been determined to implicate her in the NBP drug trade.

She pointed out that Alvarez had pressed for the showing in the House an alleged sex video showing her and Dayan. The showing fell through after other members of the House cited laws that would be violated if the tape were shown.

“If Mr. Alvarez could think in this lewd manner, I would no longer be surprised about the other ways he would trample on my dignity,” she said.

‘Public hanging’

De Lima said all the witnesses against her in the House inquiry were people of questionable credibility—“drug convicts and [people] who have a motive  to be forced to lie and testify against me.”

In another statement issued after Dayan’s testimony at the House, De Lima said she did not watch her “public hanging” in its entirety.

“But soon I will face my detractors,” she said, without elaborating.

“The glaring inconsistencies of statements from all ‘witnesses’ in the House inquiry to this [New] Bilibid Prison drug trade conspiracy speak for [themselves],” she said.

“I refuse to indulge my accusers by addressing their web of lies and desperate attempts to implicate me as a corrupt public servant,” she said.

“As a woman, it breaks my heart that my private life and personal relationship have become subject of the public and Congress’ ridicule,” she said.

“No woman, whoever or whatever she may be, whether a sitting senator or a humble secretary, deserves to be betrayed, to be treated with so much disrespect and without dignity, before the public eye, by any man she is with or had a relationship with,” she said.

“It is a shame that those I trusted fell into the trap of power, deceit, fear and intimidation that they found it necessary to lie and twist truths to save themselves,” she said. —WITH A REPORT FROM MARC JAYSON CAYABYAB