Senator Leila de Lima on Wednesday slammed the government for supposedly concealing the dismissal of the drug charges against suspected drug lords Peter Lim and Rolando “Kerwin” Espinosa Jr., calling it “the biggest joke of all.”
“The government tried to hide the dismissal of the cases from the public since December of last year. And now [President Rodrigo] Duterte is pretending to huff and puff at this dismissal,” she said in a statement.
The dismissal of the case by the Department of Justice was issued last December, but the public knew about it only this week, after copies of the resolution was obtained by the media.
“It’s either they were hiding it because they were complicit in the deal with the drug lords (including the deal for the perpetuation of their lies against me), or they are so incompetent as to be completely ignorant of the dismissal a full three months after the fact. The corruption, or the incompetence—pick your choice—is incredible,” de Lima said.
But Aguirre earlier said the December 2017 resolution was not made public because it was still subject to a motion for reconsideration and review.
The DOJ dropped the charges against the drug personalities due to a ‘weak’ complaint by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, according to Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II.
The CIDG, meanwhile, has already filed a motion for reconsideration to reverse the DOJ decision. A new panel has been created to deal with the case.
De Lima slammed the government’s drug war, calling it “fake” for supposedly not eliminating the real sources of drugs.
“If the Duterte government is consistent in anything in its drug war, it is in the lack of interest in going after the drug lords and drug deals that matter. In the meantime, thousands are killed for possession of a few ounces of shabu, most of it even planted after a supposed shootout,” she said./lb