MANILA – That the Supreme Court rejected her motion questioning the legality of the drug cases filed against her does not mean the Justice department was right to charge her, according to Sen. Leila de Lima.
It means the executive branch has already influenced the judiciary, said the staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Former Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II had said the high court’s decision to deny de Lima’s appeal to recall her arrest warrant proves that the charges against her has “a legal leg to stand on.”
The decision “does not mean that Aguirre or the DOJ (Department of Justice) is vindicated in filing charges against me,” she said.
“It only means that the Davao criminal syndicate that has captured State power in 2016 has not only been using the power of the executive department to eliminate their sworn enemies like myself but was also able to extend its influence as well to the judicial branch of government,” said de Lima.
Aguirre resorted to fabrication to prove her involvement in the illegal drug trade, de Lima said.
Acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio himself said their decision to keep her in jail is “one of the grossest injustices ever perpetrated in recent memory,” she said.
“Aguirre knows how he fabricated every single piece of testimony against me, from arranging the House of Representatives circus of Bilibid convicts, the stabbing of Jaybee Sebastian and other Bilibid 19 convicts who then still refused to testify against me, the special privileges given to the convicts who did testify against me, the coercion and intimidation of DOJ officials and employees who refused to implicate me, up to the manufacturing of fictitious and nonexistent BDO bank accounts which, up to now, have not been shown to actually exist and contain money that belongs to me,” said the senator.
De Lima, meanwhile, criticized the government for not holding Aguirre accountable for the P50-million bribery scandal at the Bureau of Immigration that also involved his fraternity brothers.
“Aguirre himself was never made to account for his role in the P50-million Jack Lam shakedown that he ordered his BI underlings to execute,” she said.
In April Aguirre stepped down as Justice secretary after the department dismissed the charges against drug suspects who admitted involvement to the drug trade, including Kerwin Espinosa and Peter Lim./PN
