De Lima to submit dissenting report on EJKs

Eleven senators have signed the committee report ruling out the existence of state-sponsored killings, including Richard Gordon, Panfilo Lacson, Gregorio Honasan, Loren Legarda, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Nancy Binay, Emmanuel Pacquiao, and Vicente Sotto The 5 senators who did not sign the report were Senators Leila de Lima, Antonio Trillanes IV, Ralph Recto, Grace Poe who was on an official business trip and JV Ejercito who is serving a 90-day suspension order

SEN. Leila de Lima yesterday said that she is currently preparing a dissenting report to counter the committee report submitted by Sen. Richard “Dick” Gordon ruling out the existence of statesponsored killings.

Gordon, chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights investigation, in his committee report pointed out that there is a lack of proof showing that the illegal drugrelated killings were indeed done by the orders of President Rodrigo Duterte.

Eleven senators have signed the committee report, including Sens. Richard “Dick” Gordon, Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan II, Loren Legarda, Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri, Nancy Binay, Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao, and Vicente “Tito” Sotto III.

Sens. Alan Peter Cayetano and Franklin Drilon signed but have reservations and intention to make amendments and interpellate while Sen. Francis Pangilinan signed with the intention to concur in part.

The five senators who did not sign the committee report were Sens. Leila de Lima, Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes IV, Ralph Recto, Grace Poe who was on an official business trip and Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito who is serving a 90- day suspension order.

De Lima was privy on points she would raise in her dissenting report but stressed the need to “change” it since proceedings were cut short.

“That’s one of my objections in the committee report — that there was a premature termination of that proceedings,” de Lima told reporters.

The neophyte senator said that the committee failed to listen to the other witnesses expected to be presented by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

“I was expecting the committee to call the others but they did not. That should have been the focus of the committee, not their focus on discounting (Edgar) Matobato,” she said referring to self-confessed DDS hitman.

“They don’t believe in Matobato. I truly believe that that the pattern in the DDS cases is the same as the one in the EJK cases,” she added.

She also said that she thought the committee report failed to focus on the more important issue at hand and instead focused on her and Senator Trillanes’s “bad behavior.”

Gordon previously accused de Lima of committing material concealment for allegedly withholding information that Matobato had been charged over a kidnap-for-ransom case in 2000.

De Lima explained that she did not remember if Matobato had mentioned the kidnapfor-ransom case during the hearing so she told them that Matobato may or may not have mentioned it.

Trillanes, who had protective custody of Matobato, defended de Lima by reading parts of the transcript that proved that Matobato indeed mentioned it twice in his previous testimony.