Senator Leila de Lima. FILE PHOTO
President Rodrigo Duterte has introduced a ‘new normal of injustice and impunity’ aside from destroying the justice system, Senator Leila de Lima said Thursday.
“Duterte is not only eroding the justice system, he is introducing the establishment of a new normal of injustice and impunity, where the poor can be killed for the flimsiest suspicion of committing the minutest of crime,” de Lima said in her martial law anniversary message.
READ: Duterte statements create environment of impunity’
The rich and powerful, on the other hand, are rewarded with liberty and alliances after stealing millions or billions of public funds intended for the poor, she said.
The senator said the extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration do not show his firm resolve to eradicate crime and corruption, but rather shows a selective, double-standard justice system.
She also scored the “amnesty program for the rich and powerful who are the most guilty in the plunder of public funds.”
“One by one, those who have stolen from the nation’s coffers are being freed. The painstaking investigated cases against them being thrown out the window,” she said, referring to the release from detention of former Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, and the likely release of Sen. Bong Revilla and Janet Lim Napoles.
The senator said Enrile, Estrada and Revilla, who were indicted for plunder, got the most kickbacks in the pork barrel scam with more than P50 million each.
“He [Duterte] cannot feign frustration at the slow pace of justice in order to summarily execute suspected and innocent individuals, while at the same time working behind the scenes to get the country’s top plunderers off the hook,” she said.
De Lima has been detained at Camp Crame since February for her supposed involvement in the illegal drug trade inside the New Bilibid Prison during her time as Justice secretary, an accusation she has vehemently denied. /idl
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