‘Enough of Leila; let’s get on with making laws’

Former President Fidel V. Ramos INQUIRER.net photo

Former President Fidel Ramos hopes to see the end to the controversy surrounding Sen. Leila de Lima, her alleged drug involvement and her past romance.

“I hope we finish that subject,” said Ramos when asked about the matter at the Meet the Inquirer Multimedia on Tuesday.

He expressed the hope that the House of Representatives, which undertook an investigation into De Lima’s alleged role in the drug trade at the national penitentiary, could focus on the task of legislation.

“Let us go on with it, because the task of Congress is in aid of legislation,” Ramos said.

“So what is the legislation that must be enacted? Let us have a more strict prison system,” he said.

Prison reforms

Ramos said the Department of Justice, which oversees the correctional system, and members of Congress must already draft a bill toward prison reforms.

However, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II has not had enough of De Lima. He is backing the move of the House of Representatives to pursue its plan to charge his predecessor with obstruction of justice for stopping her former driver and lover, Ronnie Dayan, from attending the congressional probe on illegal drugs.

Aguirre said House Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas and Justice Committee chair Rep. Reynaldo Umali did the right thing in issuing last Tuesday a show cause order against De Lima not as a senator but as a private citizen in order to avoid a confrontation with the Senate.

Show cause order

“I think it is proper. That should be done because it was done by De Lima in her private capacity and so the House could cite her in contempt not as a member of the Senate but as a private person interfering with the proceedings of the House,” Aguirre said.

The show cause order was addressed only to De Lima and not the Senate where some of De Lima’s allies have threatened to block any move by the House to censure its members.

In his testimony on Nov. 24, Dayan claimed he wanted to attend the House investigation to deny charges made by high-profile convicts and former prison officials that he received bribe money from them meant for De Lima. But Dayan said De Lima told him, through his daughter, not to attend the hearing because the House members would just make a fool of them both.

De Lima, in her defense, claimed that she only advised and did not order Dayan to snub the House probe. Dayan went into hiding for months to evade the arrest order issued against by the House until he was captured in a remote village in La Union last Nov. 23.—WITH A REPORT FROM GIL C. CABACUNGAN