Detained Senator Leila de Lima said on Sunday she wept over her failure to attend his son’s graduation from law school.
“Never did I imagine I wouldn’t be able to be there with him, bearing witness to his triumph, and being what all mothers by definition are meant to be: the number one cheerleader and supporter of their child, as they achieve one of their lifelong dreams,” De Lima said in a dispatch from Camp Crame.
The senator said she was not allowed by a Muntinlupa court to attend his graduation at San Beda Alabang College of Law as she was considered a “flight risk.”
READ: Muntinlupa court denies De Lima’s plea to attend son’s graduation
“I guess I just have to accept the fact that this regime cannot be benevolent towards me, to put it very mildly,” she said. “As I write this, I am almost ashamed to say that I am crying. Ashamed that my tears would be seen by my oppressors as some sign of weakness,” she said, “Pero tao lang ako (I am only human).”
De Lima addressed his son, Vincent Joshua, in the letter to express how proud she was for what he has achieved.
“Law school, by itself, is no cakewalk. Lesser persons would have given up on their dreams, and taken the easier way out. But not you. You are made of sterner stuff. I am both humbled and proud of the man you have become,” the senator wrote.
The senator, who was in detention since 2017 for drug charges which she has denied, said her sons made her stronger.
In her 465 days in detention, she said that attending his son’s graduation was the only favor she asked from the court, a similar request granted to other high-profile detainees.
“I wonder if those who are so petty and heartless as to deny a mother this small chance at being with her son can say the same thing,” she said. /ee