Full Text: Sen. Leila De Lima Privilege Speech on Drugs, Killings

Magandang araw po sa inyong lahat. I rise on matters of personal and collective privilege concerning a number of issues that now dominate the news and divide our people.

Our nation is in crisis. This crisis is the real and present danger posed by the illegal drug trade overwhelming our national fabric. Drug addiction, drug-pushing, and drug-related crimes, including bribery and corruption of our public officials and the penetration of our institutions by powerful drug syndicates, threaten our government, our people, and our society.

Any person undergoing a deep and profound personal crisis defends himself from the threat that brought the crisis into his life. In the same way, the nation must defend itself against the threat of the illegal drug trade lording over every aspect of our everyday lives. For so long we have been complacent about the magnitude of the problem. We have been indifferent to the number of drug pushers that have invaded our communities. We stayed silent as our impoverished youth succumbed to the promise of temporary escape from their harsh and brutish life, in the urban and rural areas, and became drug dependents.

This was the state of a nation in crisis under the threat of illegal drugs, until the overwhelming voice of the people voted to office the anti-drug crusader and Mayor of Davao City as President of the Republic, none other than President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.

The President carried a clear and distinct, almost one-track message that reverberated in the consciousness of our people. It cascaded down to the smallest communities that are the victims of drug-pushers and drug addicts. Finally, it was channelled back to the national level in the form of a resonating mandate that said: 'Yes Mayor Digong, rid us of this drug menace any which way you can. We are giving you that mandate to clean our city's streets of drugs and, if need be, dispose of all drug lords and pushers the best way you see fit, hogtied and lifeless not being an exception.'

Mr. President, I AGREE. The nation is confronted with a drug crisis that has been ignored in focus for so many years. The nation must be saved. The people must be defended. War has been declared upon us, and so war must be waged.

I am with President Duterte every step of the way in his war on drugs. I myself started the war on drugs at the National Bilibid Prison. On December 15, 2014, I personally led the raid on the drug lords' dens and took away their power over the rest of the prisoners. I isolated them in Building 14 of the National Penitentiary. This raid started at different entry points of the prison compound in order to catch the drug lords literally with their pants down. It can be described as systematically executed simultaneous raids on each and every drug lord's luxury kubol.

I praise the President's determination to make this campaign the centerpiece of his administration, when he essentially said: 'Kahit wala na akong ibang gawin hanggang sa katapusan ng aking termino, kung hindi wakasan ang salot ng droga sa bansang ito.' I myself continued cleaning up the National Bilibid Prison of drugs, in follow-up operations before I resigned as Secretary of Justice. This anti-drug campaign at the Bilibid eventually culminated with OPLAN Galugad. Together with this is the confirmation that there is no shabu laboratory inside the national penitentiary.

Yes Mr. President, there is no shabu laboratory inside the Bilibid Prison, not even in the tunnels under it. Those who will search the tunnels will get a whiff not of the smell of cooking methamphetamine, but of methane that comes from the human waste of the prisoners above.

Sa termino ko lang po bilang Justice Secretary nag-umpisang maglinis sa Bilibid. Sa termino ko lang po giniba ang mga mararangyang kubol ng drug lords at naitapon sila sa Building 14, hiwalay sa mga ordinaryong preso. But of course, all of this has been sorely forgotten in the face of a formidable demolition campaign against me in the social media.

This is where I raise the matter of personal privilege.

Mr. President, I have been vilified and attacked, not only in social media but also by the President's men, as a drug lord coddler and protector. I have been ridiculed and called names in social media. Photos are photoshopped, videos are spliced, lies are manufactured. The magnitude of the propaganda and misinformation is mind-boggling, considering that this is all directed at me. The lies are intended to show me as protector of the Bilibid drug lords. But the truth is I was the only Justice Secretary since the 1986 EDSA Revolution who dared to eradicate the dominion of the drug lords inside Bilibid.

I was put to task by no less than the Speaker of the House, as a sitting Senator of the same Congress that he leads. According to him, a resolution will be filed for an investigation on my alleged role in the proliferation of drugs inside the National Bilibid Prison. Mr. President, this not only goes against inter-parliamentary courtesy, where the House of Representatives investigates a specific member of its co-equal Senate. It is an affront to the Senate as an institution committed by none other than the leader of its coequal body in Congress.

But I will not use that time-honored principle as my primary defense.

My first defense is common sense. The Speaker of the House promised the investigation of the former Justice Secretary, the Secretary who has been sued and brought to court by the same drug lords subjected to a raid and then secluded inside NBP Bldg. 14. The Speaker intends to investigate me who, like the President and PNP Chief Bato dela Rosa, also received death threats from drug lords, for my success in isolating them from the rest of the prisoners, and for preventing them from further conducting their drug trade operations from within the walls of the national penitentiary.

My defense against the Speaker's call for my investigation in the House is not interparliamentary courtesy. That is YOUR defense, Mr. President, when you defend me as...