Leni and Leila
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Vice President Leni Robredo (Source: Inquirer.net)
Last month, there were signs that he might be losing his fight when courts decided in favor of two of these iconic women who stand unwavering in the name of freedom and democracy: Vice President Leni Robredo and Senator Leila de Lima. Since Duterte became president in 2016, he has done most of what he could to bend his concept of justice for his own gains. These women had got in the way.
At last there’s light coming out of this long, dark story that began with Duterte’s brutal war on drugs, in which more than 5,000 have been killed (others have said more). Last month, a trial court acquitted De Lima in one of three charges accusing her of conspiring to commit drug trading, in response to her lawyer’s plea to dismiss the case because of weak evidence.
After four years of imprisonment, Senator de Lima might be close to obtaining her freedom, unless the president once again leans on the courts to do his bidding, as he had done in the past. De Lima, 61, was taken to the court house for the first time during the pandemic, wearing a striped long-sleeved and hooded blouse, face mask and shield.
Senator Leila De Lima on her way to court (Source: facebook.com)
If the court likewise dismisses the other two cases – which De Lima’s lawyer hopes would soon come in succession and likely grant her bail – it would be a vindication of the senator’s claim that accusations leveled against her were fabricated to suit the president’s alleged retaliation to punish his enemies. Human rights groups have called her a “prisoner of conscience” placed into what the government calls “preventive detention” while her case has been prolonged.
De Lima was one of the most vocal critics of the president’s anti-drug war, a single-minded policy Duterte was obsessed with to replicate what he had done as longtime mayor of Davao City in the south. De Lima was then the human rights commissioner who threatened to investigate Duterte’s alleged death squad.
No sooner had he warmed his seat as the elected president in mid-2016 than he moved to make an example of De Lima, who was just elected senator in the same year after having served as justice secretary in the previous government. One after another, “witnesses” came forward accusing her of accepting bribes when she was a cabinet secretary, from so-called drug lords jailed in the notorious Bilibid Prison outside of Manila. She was also humiliated in Congress over her supposed affair with her driver-cum-bodyguard.
Senator De Lima (Photo by Alex Nuevaespaña)
The action was uncharacteristically swift in a justice system known for long delays and lack of rigor; and it became clear early on that Duterte minced no words when asserting his authoritarian streak and undermining democratic rules. On February 24 four years ago – in the middle of celebrating the people power revolt – De Lima’s imprisonment was a major event. She was shown being taken to a jail in Camp Crame, the headquarters of the Philippine National Police where past government and military officials had served their sentences.
A newspaper columnist called her “a martyr of Philippine politics.” De Lima said Duterte had made her his “favorite punching bag.” In one of her dispatches from prison, she depicted the president as a tyrant who uses public resources “to avenge himself for personal slight.” And in a more private touch, she wrote about the stray cats she fed in prison and the heart-tugging visit of her mother who was suffering from dementia.
The Supreme Court had rejected her bid seeking protection against the president’s insulting and misogynistic tirades on her private life, saying Duterte was covered by presidential immunity. But meanwhile, the high court also dismissed an electoral protest, in favor of the Vice President Robredo. Again, and similar to De Lima’s case, this was one of those long-running legal actions involving women that are a thorn in the president’s side.
The protest was filed by Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator, who lost to Robredo in the vice-presidential race of 2016. He was Duterte’s favored bet, the president himself having acknowledged that the Marcos family financially contributed to his campaign. Robredo briefly served in the cabinet at the outset before she was dismissed. Later in 2019, she took the president’s challenge to help run an anti-illegal drugs body, only to find herself removed again when it appeared that she was performing well.
“Will the women that the president has sought to destroy play a key role in the coming round of voting that will yet again determine the course of the country’s fragile democracy?”
In the third attempt by Marcos Jr. to unseat Robredo (claiming that he was cheated), the court unanimously dismissed his contention as groundless. That came late in day when a six-year term is about to be over, and the next presidential race is already on the horizon. Robredo became “a permanent political outcast,” according to an editorial by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, while Marcos Jr., her opponent, enjoyed “fulsome assistance” from the country’s solicitor general.
This latest round of victory has given Robredo a boost to her reputation, which has soared in the time of the pandemic: it was her office that rolled out help for the front-liners, the coronavirus patients, and the unemployed who lost their jobs in the lockdown. Her office literally turned into a warehouse filled with donation boxes from private companies and non-government organizations, revealing trust in her capability while the national government was moving at a snail’s pace.
With one more year down the road before the next elections come around, are these back-to-back court decisions signs that President Duterte is something of the lame duck? And will the women that the president has sought to destroy play a key role in the coming round of voting that will yet again determine the course of the country’s fragile democracy?
A version of this article was published in Asia Sentinel, February 22, 2021.
Cruselda Yabes
Criselda Yabes is a writer and journalist based in Manila. Her most recent books include Crying Mountain (Penguin SEA) on the 1970s rebellion in Mindanao and Broken Islands (Ateneo de Manila University Press) set in the Visayas in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
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