De Lima tells birthday boy Duterte: Stop being a bully

Senator Leila de Lima.
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

Even on his birthday, President Rodrigo Duterte did not escape a tongue-lashing from his vocal critic, detained Senator Leila de Lima.

De Lima, in another handwritten statement on Tuesday, asked the President to stop his “bullying” and “bullheadedness.”

“Stop the bullying and the bullheadedness, Mr. President. You have a people to lead and a country to govern,” the senator said.

READ: Duterte: De Lima ‘was corrupting everybody’ during DOJ stint

“Your pettiness, rudeness, and profanities will get you and us nowhere,” said De Lima, who has been detained on drug charges.

The senator issued the statement in response to Duterte’s latest tirade against the European Union (EU), hurling invectives at it for proposing a “health-based” approach to the Philippines’ drug problem.

“Ang EU, they communicated with us, they want a health-based solution for the drugs, mga p**** ina niyo (sons of b*****), do you want us to build clinics? Then instead of arresting, putting them in prison, put them there?” the President said in a speech last Friday. IDL/rga

READ: Duterte rejects EU’s ‘health-based’ solution to drug problem