‘I have frailties, but I’m no evil woman or slut’

MANILA, Philippines - Feeling abandoned even by her peers, Sen. Leila de Lima has taken her case to schools, defending her integrity while admitting her human weaknesses.

“I am not the bad and evil woman or slut they’re trying to portray the past few weeks,” De Lima said yesterday.

She admitted making mistakes in her personal life but insisted she has never betrayed the country.

“I have not partied with or slept with any drug convict. I have not received anything from a drug convict or a drug lord or anyone else,” De Lima told a forum of students at Miriam College in Quezon City.

While she would prefer to keep her personal life private, De Lima said this has inevitably become public due in large part to President Duterte’s leading the continuous attacks against her.

After questioning the manner in which the Duterte administration is implementing its war on drugs and even alleging that it has been engaged in extrajudicial killings, the President has gone on the offensive against her, which sometimes became a daily affair.

Duterte and his allies in government have accused De Lima of receiving money from drug lords and of having an affair with her married driver.

De Lima has taken every opportunity to deny many of the allegations, which she branded as lies and fabrications.

De Lima denied the allegations that she received money from drug convicts in the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) to fund her campaign in the May elections.

“I am not the queen of the drug trade of the Bilibid. I am not the mother of these drug lords and I am not one who… has turned this country into a narco-state because in the first place, our country is far from being a narco-state,” De Lima said.

“And yes, as a human being, as a woman, I have frailties. I have weaknesses. I have certain flaws. As a woman I made mistakes in my personal life and I always considered my personal life as a private matter. It’s a sacred thing to me but now they’ve been intruding and encroaching into my privacy. Yes, I made mistakes and when I do make mistakes in my personal life, I pick up the pieces and move on. But never did I betray my country,” she stressed.

Apart from taking in the regular verbal assaults coming from the President, De Lima also had to fend off more attacks coming from her colleagues in Congress.

The House of Representatives conducted a series of hearings on the proliferation of illegal drugs in the NBP, the focus of which was on her involvement as the former secretary of justice.

In the Senate, after initiating an inquiry into the alleged extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders, De Lima was ousted as chair of the committee on justice and human rights.

“Their whole agenda is to crush and break my spirit so that no one would listen to me anymore. Our democracy is in peril,” De Lima said.

When she felt that even her colleagues were no longer listening to her, De Lima said she has decided to go around the campuses to try to get anyone to listen to what she had to say.

“Almost everyone of them in the Senate do not want to hear me so I might as well get out of the Senate halls and reach out to you in the hope that you would listen and open your minds,” De Lima said.

“Even my time in my office is not much of a respite from the stress of unmitigated attacks, which is why at times like this when I get to go out and meet with people, especially the young, face to face, see the faces of the people I am fighting for are even more precious to me than they have ever been before,” she added.

De Lima said she would continue speaking out against the President.

She said that sexism has once again reemerged in the country “in the form of a president who thinks nothing of telling a woman to kill herself or for the sin of daring to stand up against men on the issue of the spate of extrajudicial killings.”

“The fight to protect the sanctity of human life and to retain some level of dignity in the face of oppression and inhumanity has been a daily struggle for me. I will continue to fight as long as it takes,” De Lima said.

Do not idolize Duterte 

In another student forum, De Lima called for those who voted and supported Duterte not to follow his every lead or defend his every pronouncement.

“How exactly did you expect us to react to that, that oft-repeated statement about shoot to kill, kill, kill, kill? Us, human rights activists, how do you expect us to react to statements like that?” De Lima told the forum held at the College of the Holy Spirit in Manila.

“Did you really believe that we will collectively shrug our shoulders in resignation, fold up our placards, call it a day and go home upon hearing those?” she said. – Paolo Romero, Evelyn Macairan