<p>
A lawyer-friend has a compelling theory about why Senator Leila de Lima cannot play the victim card, regardless of how many press conferences she holds, how freely she weeps in public and how long she kneels in prayer in church. The lack of public sympathy for De Lima, according to this friend, is in large part due to the fact that she did not cut a very sympathetic figure when she was in near-total control of the criminal justice system as Justice secretary.
</p>
<p>
"It wasn't too long ago when De Lima was playing the role of victimizer", she told me. "Rightly or wrongly, the perception was that she was the main implementor of a policy of vindictive and highly selective justice; she can't turn that perception around simply because the administration has changed and she is no longer the all-powerful SOJ."
</p>
<p>
Indeed, if the latest pronouncements from De Lima about the poor treatment she's supposed to be receiving from the Duterte administration sound eerily familiar, it's because she was the target of the very same complaints just a few months and years ago. I refer, in particular, to De Lima's objection to the filing of drug trafficking charges against her by an anti-crime group before the Department of Justice and her plan to stage her own legal offensive to challenge the immunity from suit of an incumbent president.
</p>
<p>
It was only a couple of years back when De Lima was defending her use of her office as the appropriate venue for the filing of charges against government officials, citing Supreme Court decisions to back up her pursuit of big names in the old Arroyo administration. And as for the immunity of her former boss, President Noynoy Aquino, De Lima (ever the faithful servant) said repeatedly that an incumbent president enjoys unique and absolute immunity from suit and that this immunity can't ever be challenged.
</p>
<p>
How times have changed. Or rather, how low an opinion De Lima must have of Filipinos if she thinks that she can so quickly change her stripes from victimizer to victim.
</p>
<p>
If De Lima had kept quiet like most of her fellow former travelers on Aquino's straight path—including some of the ex-president's most vocal defenders in the Senate who have now been struck dumb—maybe she would not be greeted with raised eyebrows every time she attempts to assay the role of victim. But because she is by her own admission not really a politician, perhaps she may have been suckered into immediately going on the offense, even before she's been really attacked.
</p>
<div class="my-top-ads-pad top-page-ad-frame-2">   
    <div class="centered_elems">
        
        <ins class="adsbygoogle my-auto-gad"
             style="display:inline-block"
             data-ad-client="ca-pub-1532779215895298"
             data-ad-slot="8337201447">           
        </ins>
        <script>
        (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
        </script>    
    </div>
</div>
<p>
So now she's got no choice but to take on the mantle of human-rights advocate. Which is truly ironic when you recall that De Lima was the primary legal architect of the case that a United Nations panel ruled was a violation of the human rights of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Sources</strong>: 
</p>
<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
Leila and Gloria by Jojo Robles, October 14, 2016, <a href="https://goo.gl/I6GsLr" class="news_link" target="_blank" title="Source">Manila Standard</a>
</li>
</ol>
<p>
<i>
<small>
(This article is adapted from the source listed above.  We are unable to grant permission for any kind of reproduction other than social media shares.)
</small>
</i>
</p>

Lesson for De Lima - Do unto others as you would have them do unto you