Cool, professional
SEN. Leila de Lima should probably take President Rodrigo Duterte’s advice and take a break. Judging from the ugly spectacle she made of herself Wednesday morning the President might just be right that she is close to breaking point.
She is a lawyer and knows she is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The professional response, therefore, of the lawyer in her should be to nonchalantly challenge her accusers to sue her in a court of law so she can counter their charges with her own pile of evidence to the contrary.
It is definitely not lawyer-like and not even smart of her to instead counter the allegations against her by doing a Jejomar Binay, which is to simply deny and deny and very angrily at that.
Her accusers claim they have evidence to convict her. True or false, she should know that no amount of angry denial can refute their charges but only her own counter-evidence. It is a classic principle that only what is alleged gratuitously (without proof) can be denied also gratuitously or without proof. Alleged with evidence should be refuted with evidence.
It is also quite un-lawyer-like of her to defend herself with non-sequiturs or invalid conclusions the last of which she expounded also last Wednesday. At her impromptu press conference, she told reporters that the President’s admission to, and apology for, three mistakes in the matrix of drug personalities is proof that the rest of the matrix is trash and a bunch of lies.
I could not believe I was hearing this from a lawyer who should know that you can only conclude validly from the general to the particular but not vice-versa or from the particular to the general. Even non-lawyers can see that three mistakes in a list are not conclusive proof that the rest in the list are mistakes.
The most glaring of her non-sequiturs was what she was leading up to when she used Edgar Matobato’s testimony to prove that then Davao City mayor Duterte ordered the killings by the Davao Death Squad (DDS).
Granting (for the sake of argument only because even the existence of the so-called DDS still has to be proven) that Mayor Duterte ordered the killings, it still does not follow and still has to be separately proven that President Duterte is now behind all the deaths in the war against drugs.
Senator de Lima is a lawyer and has the educational background, the experience and the stature to prove her innocence in a court of law. She is not helping herself by simply raving madly at her accusers.
She would be well advised to admit that this time around the President is right about her nearing a nervous breakdown. She should chill out and prepare for her defense as coolly and professionally as a lawyer, a former justice secretary and a seating senator should.