De Lima says Duterte using her to cover up his ‘failures’

Sen. Leila de Lima’s 38th dispatch from her detention cell at the PNP Custodial Center in Camp Crame. (Photo from her Facebook page)

Detained Sen. Leila De Lima accused President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday of using her as a smokescreen to his “treachery” of selling Philippine territory to China, among his other blunders.

In a handwritten note sent from the Camp Crame Detention Center, De Lima maintained that the accusations Duterte had been hurling at her were all lies.

The note, which she wrote in Filipino, said the accusations against her “cannot equal the treachery and sale of our country to China.”

She added: “Our territories and holdings at sea fought for by our ancestors and recognized by the arbitral tribunal at the Hague were sold out by the current leadership.”

“I am being used to cover up his betrayal of our country and other failures of this government,” De Lima concluded.

The note is the 38th of the senator’s dispatches from her detention cell at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame in Quezon City. /atm