Answer disbarment rap, SC tells Leila

MANILA, Philippines – The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday ordered Sen. Leila de Lima to answer a petition filed by a fellow lawyer seeking her disbarment over an admitted affair with her former driver and bodyguard Ronnie Dayan.

In its first session this year, the high court required De Lima to submit her comment to the complaint filed by Fernando Perito late last year.

The SC gave De Lima 10 days from receipt of notice to comply with the order.

The disbarment complaint filed with the SC’s Office of the Bar Confidant accused De Lima of gross immorality in violation of Code of Conduct of Lawyers because of her illicit relationship with Dayan.

Perito cited as evidence the public admission of the affair made by De Lima in a TV interview last November.

A similar disbarment complaint against De Lima was filed before the SC by the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption and former National Bureau of Investigation deputy directors Reynaldo Esmeralda and Ruel Lasala, who were also complainants in the drug trafficking and graft charges against her in the Department of Justice.

In 2012, Perito also filed a disbarment case against De Lima for her alleged defiance following an SC temporary restraining order issued in November 2011 when she stopped former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel Arroyo from leaving the country ostensibly to seek medical treatment abroad.

De Lima broke her silence and confirmed that she had a relationship with the Dayan for “a few years” during a TV interview.

Asked why she fell for Dayan, a married man, De Lima said it was due to the “frailties of a woman.”

“We became so close, that’s it, because I trusted him and of course I fell for him,” she confessed.

Dayan also admitted having an affair with De Lima for seven years.

After testifying before a congressional inquiry, Dayan was accepted as a witness against De Lima and other personalities involved in the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison.

He was put in a safehouse in his hometown in Urbiztondo, Pangasinan but reports said he still fears for his life and constantly changes residence. – With Eva Visperas