Duterte: If I were De Lima, I’d hang myself

Senator insists that she is innocent and says that the drug matrix released by the President ‘properly belongs to the garbage can’

AMID the heated word war between President Rodrigo Duterte and Sen. Leila de Lima, the Chief Executive yesterday called out the latter to just quit her Senate post and “hang [her]self.”

“If I were de Lima — ladies and gentlemen — I [would] hang myself…You should resign. You resign,” the President said in a speech he delivered in Tacloban City.

“What face can you show to your fellow women? [How can you say], ‘Follow me, this is how to be a woman of the world [if your reputation is already tainted]? That’s difficult,” he added.

Earlier in a separate event, the President had also accused de Lima of her supposed participation in the illegal drug trade inside the national penitentiary but said he would not intervene in the coming House probe against the senator.

“You cannot compel anybody, and not a senator actually...I won’t intervene [in the House probe into the drug trade inside the national penitentiary]. That is their (lawmakers’) work,” Duterte said in Catbalogan, Samar, when sought for comment on de Lima’s statement that she would not attend the House inquiry.

Last week, the President linked de Lima and six others in the alleged prevalence of drugs inside the national penitentiary.

He also claimed that with the senator’s involvement in drugs, her career in government “is finished.”

Despite the President’s allegation, de Lima maintained that she is innocent and said that the drug matrix released by Duterte “properly belongs to the garbage can.”

De Lima earned the President’s ire way before he was elected when she prompted as a Commission on Human Rights chair the investigation, which sought to establish his alleged links to the vigilante group Davao Death Squad. (Ruth Abbey Gita/ Sunnex)