Senator Leila de Lima and President Rodrigo Duterte. FILE PHOTOS
Detained Senator Leila de Lima called President Rodrigo Duterte an “old man” that has an “EQ of a six-year-old.”
De Lima made the remark in reaction to Duterte’s continued attacks against some media outlets, particularly ABS-CBN and the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The senator lamented the administration was being run by Duterte’s “personal vindictiveness” and its policies were “purely founded on the President’s “desire to avenge what he considers as personal affronts against him.”
READ: De Lima slams Duterte’s ‘unprecedented’ tirades vs media
“In the same way that his foreign policy of making the Philippines a satellite state of China is simply borne out of his personal need for long-term political survival in a world that is increasingly demanding his immediate criminal accountability, Duterte now threatens a government assault on the Inquirer and ABS-CBN for supposed personal slights committed against him,” she said in a handwritten statement dated April 30, 2017 but was only released to reporters this Tuesday.
“This is an old man at the helm of government but with an EQ of a six (6) year-old. He disregards constitutional principles of press freedom and democratic governance by a professional civil service corps just to satisfy his need for vengeance to avenge his being a victim of what purportedly amounts to a simple case of estafa, if at all, but by bringing the full force of government to bear on the supposed swindler, instead of simply filing a case in court.”
“This is classic Duterte, where the personal becomes public policy,” added De Lima, who has been charged and detained for alleged drug links.
READ: Duterte thinks Trillanes, De Lima, Robredo planning to unseat him
The senator claimed that she was “one of the very first victims of this President with the EQ of a 6-yr. old” as she accused the President of allegedly using the whole government against her.
Duterte and his allies, she said, had portrayed her as the country’s “number one drug lord” just because she investigated the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS) when she was still chair of the Commission on Human Rights in 2009.
“I am now in prison because of this childish vindictiveness,” De Lima said.
The neophyte senator also initiated a Senate probe on alleged extrajudicial killings in the country under the Duterte administration.
“So after the attacks on opposition figures like me, now comes the whole assault on press freedom, using the same full complement of the State’s coercive power to bear on the unfortunate media establishments that he deemed to have stepped on his toes,” she said.”
“Where the leader of government uses public resources to avenge himself for personal slights, that is the very characteristic of a tyrant and a tyranny. Beyond fascism, this is boundless monarchical entitlement drawn from the dark ages of kings of old, of invoking the divine power of life and death over whosoever crosses the king and incurs his personal ire.
“‘Off with his head,’ says the Red Queen of Alice’s Wonderland. This is our own Wonderland now, and Duterte is our Red King,” De Lima further said. CBB/rga