And for all of De Lima's playing of the woman card, she has not at all denied that she has had intimate and sexual relationship with her subordinate Ronnie Dayan, her former bodyguard-driver. Shortly after his first de Lima slam, Duterte went for another strike by announcing in a televised comment that the senator has taken another lover, an MMDA motorcycle escort, after she apparently got tired of Dayan.


While we live in a liberal age, a senator having a relationship with her married subordinate, and allegedly gifting him with houses and even vehicles, create a dent on the integrity of the entire Senate, which is supposed to be a model of uprightness for citizens, and especially the youth.


If proven that she did gift her lover with houses, the obvious question is where could she have made the money for this when she had been in government for only 12 years since President Arroyo's term, as head of the Commission on Human Rights?


What makes her position untenable is that she was Justice Secretary for six years, the Republic's prime law-enforcement officer. Yet in her six years in office, just like his boss President Aquino, she had hardly alerted the nation to the rapid proliferation of illegal drugs and the monstrous social menace that has created. She hadn't undertaken even a fraction of the scale of operations against it that the present administration has lunched in just two months.


It is difficult to believe that she had been largely ignorant of the illegal drug industry's proliferation in this country. It is as difficult to believe that she simply closed her eyes to this while it was happening, free of any blame.


Now we are all shocked that illegal drugs use has been uncovered as a plague upon the nation, with 10 percent of our adult population dependent on them, and that the industry has become a main generator of corruption and crime in our society.


What could be a clearer indictment of an incompetent justice secretary than the fact that the Bilibid National Prison, which was under her supervision, had become not only the command center of drug lords, but also their distribution point and even manufacturing facility?


Had the extent of the illegal drug problem been disclosed during the last elections, there is no doubt de Lima would not have been elected as senator, and would have even landed in the lowest rungs. A senatorial contest for a non-incumbent senator has been estimated to cost at least P500 million. From where and how could de Lima have raised such kind of money?


In the final analysis, de Lima as senator is a fraud, having been elected on a completely false premise that she did her job as the nation's chief law enforcement officer, and if the allegations by President Duterte against her turn out to be correct, she even probably raised campaign funds from the very criminals she was supposed to put in jail. On the other hand, what value can she add to the Senate when her purported qualification for the post, that of basically being a former justice secretary, proves to be spurious?


Never before has such a sitting senator been exposed to so much public scrutiny for allegations of being a fraud. De Lima should spare the country, and herself, from such ignominy. She should scour deep in her heart to find some patriotism, and resign her post in what is often referred to in a cliché, but in a fervent wish, as the country's august body.



Sources: 

<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
Duterte can mold Supreme Court after his image, Rigoberto Tiglao, August 29, 2016 (<a href="https://goo.gl/ADMjrz" class="news_link" target="_blank" title="Source">http://goo.gl/ADMjrz</a>)
</li>
</ol>


(Most of this is adapted from the source listed above. We are unable to grant permission for any kind of reproduction other than social media shares.)

De Lima should scour deep in her heart to find some patriotism and resign