Leila agrees to suspend Senate probe of killings

Senator Leila de Lima as the Rotary Club of Manila’s guest of honor and speaker in Manila Polo Club, Makati City.
INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

Sen. Leila de Lima has decided to suspend her committee’s inquiry into extrajudicial killings in the government’s war on drugs while President Duterte is traveling abroad.

Mr. Duterte leaves next week to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Laos and to visit Brunei and Indonesia, on his first international trip as the leader of the Philippines.

Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, Mr. Duterte’s defeated vice presidential running mate in May’s national elections, on Wednesday called for a suspension of the Senate committee on justice and human rights’ inquiry into the government-sanctioned war on drugs that has taken the lives of nearly 2,000 people while the President is abroad.

“If their concern is that [the President] might get embarrassed, in the spirit of good faith, I am willing,” De Lima, the committee chair, said on Thursday.

“I’m always in good faith. They’re the ones always trying to misconstrue my words and my actions,” said De Lima, who is under attack from Mr. Duterte and his allies in the House of Representatives for investigating the extrajudicial killings.

Her committee has held two hearings and is supposed to continue hearing testimony from witnesses on Sept. 5.

De Lima did not set a date for the third hearing, but it is likely to be held after Mr. Duterte returns on Sept. 9.

“To embarrass the President before the community of nations is far from my mind,” De Lima said.

“If we are getting embarrassed, it’s because of this spate of killings,” she added. “If they’re asking for a ceasefire, then the best thing to do is to have a ceasefire in the killings.”

During a hearing on the Philippine National Police 2017 budget at the House on Thursday, the country’s top cop told lawmakers that the PNP, as of Aug. 31, had filed 628 cases involving the killing of 1,507 people in the war on drugs.