Senator Leila de Lima. AP FILE PHOTO
No visit yet from Koko, the Senate President, but not to worry: here’s Coco to the rescue.
Sen. Leila de Lima on Saturday got her wish—a visit from Japanese spitz Coco, her favorite pet among her 13 dogs that include Chihuahuas, Dachshunds, Labradors and Jack Russells.
Coco was allowed into the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame a week into De Lima’s incarceration, after the senator expressed her wish to see her furry friend. The 6-year-old Coco apparently missed her as well, as he “followed his beloved owner wherever she went” during the visit, De Lima’s staff said.
The senator, who is facing nonbailable drug charges which she had described as “vindictive politics,” has received several visitors since she was arrested on Feb. 24, among them Liberal Party (LP) allies: former President Benigno Aquino III, Senators Francis Pangilinan and Antonio Trillanes IV, former Education Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro, and former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman.
Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, who has yet to visit De Lima, said he would check on her “in due time.”
Even in detention, De Lima has continued to participate in the national discourse, issuing handwritten notes and statements from her quarters.
On Saturday, she scored the shadowy group behind #Lenileaks #Nagaleaks, alleged exposes against Vice President Leni Robredo, the LP member holding the highest position in government.
“Enough of your lies. Enough of your evilness!” De Lima said in a handwritten note from detention.
She also decried the fake story circulating in social media claiming she had attempted to commit suicide in detention, and said that such fake stories were being “reinforced” by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez’s statement that she “should be detained in a mental hospital instead of the PNP Custodial Center.”
Such “alternative fact news” were meant “to condition the minds of the people that the worst can happen to me while in detention,” De Lima said in a separate statement.