Senator Leila M. de Lima has lashed back anew at Senator Richard Gordon and ordered him to stop defaming her and using her to redeem himself to President Rodrigo Duterte.
“Your track record as a public servant shows that you are more than capable of being just a mere stool pigeon to this man presently ruling our country,” De Lima told Gordon.
“All you have to do is to stand up to him, like I did. You have no secrets to hide anyway, right?” she told him.
“Stop using me to earn “brownie points” from Mr. Duterte and “redeem” yourself to the chief executive.”
The President had earlier castigated Gordon, even calling him names, to get back at the senator for criticizing his appointment of a Cabinet secretary.
De Lima also hit Gordon for maliciously accusing her that she has benefited from the Good Conduct Time Allowance Law to bankroll her senatorial run in the 2016 elections.
De Lima, a former justice secretary, also told Gordon to shut up because she’s not capable of matching Gordon in the media since she has been detained.
“Tigilan mo na ako Sen. Gordon. Nakakulong ako at walang kakayahan na makipagsabayan sa publiko at media sa paninira mo sa akin,” said the former jutice secretary.
“I hope the next time you will hit me, it should be right in my face and we’re facing each other so I will have the chance to deny your malicious accusations against me,” also said De Lima.
Gordon is the chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon and justice committee which conducted an investigation into the alleged sale of GCTA in the Bureau of Corrections.
De Lima lamented how Gordon continues to take unfair advantage of her continued unjust detention for resentfully and irresponsibly spreading false information against her without offering a substantiated evidence.
“I do not really know what Sen. Gordon’s beef with me is. He is the only source of the supposed rumor that I used the GCTA IRR to shake down prisoners,” De Lima said.
Earlier, Gordon had said that De Lima crafted a vague Implementing Rules and Regulations for the GCTA Law to raise campaign funds from the GCTA Law during her stint as justice secretary.
He scored De Lima for expanding the Secretary of Justice’s power over the release of prisoners by supposedly tweaking the Law’s IRR as justice secretary, but ironically lauded her successor and now Supreme Court Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa for issuing a department order mandating the SOJ’s review of releases of inmates.
De Lima, who, along with former Interior and Local Secretary Mar Roxas, approved and signed the IRR on Republic Act (RA) 10592 or the Expanded GCTA Law, which was drafted by a Joint DOJ-DILG Committee, said Gordon’s “loose tongue” belies his logic again.
“Would it not have been easier, Sen. Gordon, if I issued the same Department Order instead of supposedly tweaking the GCTA IRR? Did not SOJ Caguioa’s action likewise expanded the SOJ’s power over the release of prisoners, the very same thing you are charging me with in supposedly tweaking the GCTA IRR?” she asked.
“Ano ba talaga? Kapag iba ang gumawa, kahanga-hanga sa iyo, pero kapag ako na ay siguradong ilegal at kriminal ang layunin?” she added.
While Gordon, along with some allies of Mr. Duterte, implicated De Lima in the money-making schemes inside the Bureau of Corrections, including the early release of inmates convicted of heinous crimes under the GCTA Law, De Lima was not invited in the Senate hearings about the controversy to defend herself.
De Lima, who remains detained on what she claimed as trumped-up drug charges brought up against her by the Duterte administration, has since maintained that the original IRR of the GCTA Law is consistent with the law itself and in keeping with the principle of restorative justice.
She has repeatedly called out the Duterte administration to stop using her as a convenient scapegoat in the mess created by the abuses in granting GCTA to unqualified or undeserving convicted inmates by the President’s underlings, principally former BuCor Director-General Nicanor Faeldon.
