MANILA: Before insulting President Rodrigo Duterte and downplaying efforts to end insurgency in the country, jailed Senator Leila de Lima should realise how her corrupt tenure as Department of Justice secretary destroyed lives and betrayed Filipinos many times over.
National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) spokesperson for sectoral concerns and Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy on Saturday fired back at de Lima, who has been detained in Camp Crame since 2017 for illegal drug trading.
“She has panicked and let loose a volley of words insulting the honest work of faithful public servants of the NTF-ELCAC that’s been clocking amazing gains for our country, among them the surrender of 24,000 rebels, the unprecedented dismantling of whole guerrilla fronts, and the landfall of real public service in areas of the country that, before President Duterte sat in office, never felt the presence of government,” Badoy said in a statement.
In her dispatch dated April 1, de Lima called out Badoy for “red-tagging” and labelling human rights defenders, student activists, and progressive organisations as communist sympathisers.
“Badoy must be so desperate because she is being sued for abusing her office, red-tagging people left and right without any basis that in spite of her years in office, no legitimate case was filed, much less a conviction resulted, from her accusations,” de Lima said.
Badoy maintained that no one is “red-tagging.”
“Jail time has made her lag behind and we need to update her on the latest Supreme Court ruling. Let me then educate you, de Lima. The Supreme Court has already ruled that there is no danger to life, liberty, and security when one is identified as a member of the CPP-NPA-NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front),” Badoy said.
Badoy said de Lima’s incarceration “must have gotten her confused about a lot of things like the term red-tagging”.
“Speak that ludicrous term one more time, Leila, and the Filipino people will see even clearer how you mouth the propaganda lines of the terrorist organisation you are closely linked with,” Badoy said.
Badoy said the senator must realise that she enjoys civil liberties while she remains locked up for involvement in illegal drug activities.
“Neither am I the corrupt Justice Secretary who will go down in history as the one who’s been alleged to have fuelled her political ambitions with blood money she got by partying with convicted drug felons and under her watch, effectively strengthened the perversity of a penal system that ditched reforms and made Muntinlupa the manufacturing and distribution hub of drugs in the country,” Badoy said.
Badoy coined the term “Kabag” for party-list groups Kabataan, ACT, Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, and Gabriela that have purportedly been infiltrated by the CPP.
“There is nothing desperate about our quest for justice by getting the real extent of damage a most corrupt Justice secretary has done by the number of lives she destroyed and a country she spat on,” she added.
Badoy wants de Lima to “rot in jail, hopefully for the rest of her life, so that she may never again hurt the Filipino people”.
“It is but right and just that this corrupt politician so totally bereft of principles and love for country, like her allies, Kabag, never get voted back into office by the Filipino people whom they have betrayed and destroyed many times over,” she said.
The CPP-NPA is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
The Anti-Terrorism Council also formally designated CPP-NPA’s political wing, NDF, as a terrorist organisation on June 23, 2021, citing it as “an integral and inseparable part” of the CPP-NPA that was created in April 1973.
