He has to do something while it is still in his power to do so. He increasingly launches into embarrassing monologues about her in public that show that instead of her breaking, it is he that is being unhinged by her. What if he fails in his bid to get his daughter or his sidekick to succeed him? His implacable foe could eventually become the instrument of his demise with the time bomb of evidence she possesses. The next episode of this real life drama is still being written: She decides to run for reelection from jail, making his conviction for the thousands of lives he has taken the centerpiece of her campaign. Instead, from jail she becomes his most formidable critic and her imprisonment becomes the symbol of all that is wrong with his darkening rule. He becomes head of state and carries out his threat with a frame-up that is so brazen that it succeeds in making people distrust their own instincts about her innocence.Īll it would take for him to release her, she is told, is if she crawls to him for forgiveness, but she refuses. He tells the country he will get even and force the “bitch” to swallow a CD where he says he heard her say she would make him accountable for his crimes against humanity. Ī crusader for human rights investigates the deeds of a murderous local despot. The Leila de Lima versus Rodrigo Duterte saga is a political drama right out of Shakespeare (think Richard III) or Costa Gavras (think Z). When decades from now, a later generation of Filipinos look back on the Duterte presidency and ask themselves how on earth so many of their forebears could elect a murderer and applaud him as he went about his bloody business for six years, it is likely that the only person they will regard as a hero in this dark era is Leila de Lima. 1 for telling the Filipino leader that she would not rest until she secured his conviction and imprisonment for the extra-judicial execution of over 20,000 people in his bloody “war on drugs.” Philippine Senator Leila de Lima is one of the world’s best known political prisoners.įramed on false charges of being at the center of the illegal drug trade and mercilessly flayed by President Rodrigo Duterte as an “immoral woman,” de Lima became Public Enemy No.
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