Who Is Leila De Lima? Philippine President Duterte's Staunch Critic Faces Criminal Charges

The Philippine government filed a criminal case in court Wednesday against a high-profile critic of President Rodrigo Duterte. The justice ministry accused its former chief Sen. Leila de Lima of disrupting a congressional investigation looking into her involvement in the drugs trade.

The justice ministry reportedly accused the senator of deliberately skipping the house inquiry and advising her ex-driver, also her alleged bagman, to go into hiding ignoring a legislative summons. The ministry recommended charging de Lima with obstruction of justice.

The ministry accused de Lima of violating Article 150 that deals with law on legislative summonses. If found guilty, de Lima could face a prison term ranging from one to six months in addition to a fine of up to 1,000 Philippine pesos ($20), local media reports said.

De Lima is one of the few domestic critics of Duterte’s war on drugs campaign, which has killed nearly 6,000 people. Philippine newspaper Rappler puts the number of people killed in relation to the anti-drug drive at 6,095 as of Dec. 14, 2016, including 3,993 extrajudicial killings.

She once led an investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings in relation to a similar anti-drug drive in the city of Davao when Duterte was the mayor of the southern city. However, she was removed as head of the investigation by Duterte’s allies and later became the subject of a congressional inquiry where witnesses claimed she was part of the drug trade.

De Lima dismissed the allegations and filed a case in the country’s Supreme Court in an attempt to prevent Duterte and his allies from making false allegations about her private and public life.

The senator said Wednesday the criminal charges will neither affect her nor would it change the fact that people were dying in relation to Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.

“It’s saddening and frightening that even high-ranking public figures have swallowed hook, line and sinker the fantasy that the Duterte administration has been weaving: that a single person was single-handedly responsible for the proliferation of drugs in our country,” she reportedly said, referring to the accusations against her that she is a drug lord.

Duterte recently admitted to personally killing criminals. “In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys [police officers] that if I can do it, why can’t you,” he said last week. “And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”

De Lima and Sen. Richard Gordon, head of the senate justice committee, said this latest admission from Duterte served as grounds for impeachment.

“That is betrayal of public trust and that constitutes high crimes because mass murders certainly fall into the category of high crimes. And high crimes is a ground for impeachment under the constitution,” De Lima said.