Duterte shows De Lima soft heart
President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday has shown his soft side to detained Sen. Leila de Lima as he expressed inclination to approve the senator’s request for furlough so she can visit her ailing mother.
Despite their “rocky” relationship stemming from De Lima’s critical stance against the President, Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go revealed that Duterte sees no problem with the lady senator’s request to be with her mother.
“President Rodrigo Duterte said he will have no objection if the courts allow Sen. Leila de Lima to see her mother,” Go’s office said in a statement.
Go’s statements echoed the earlier stance of Malacañang that it will not meddle with the request of the detained senator.
In a previous statement, Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo stressed that the President “has not interfered with any case involving anybody. He never interfered. So, the discretion lies always on the court.”
“We will never interfere with whatever cases there are pending before the courts,” Panelo added.
‘Critically ill’
De Lima’s lawyer Raymond Baguilat previously said the senator’s mother, Norma Magistrado de Lima, is “critically ill” and is in a hospital in Iriga City, Camarines Sur. He claimed doctors said she might pass away soon.
Baguilat filed the furlough request last Friday before the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court Branch 205, where De Lima is facing drug-related charges. In a dispatch from her detention room in Camp Crame, the lady senator appealed for prayers as her mother’s health worsens.
“My 86-year-old mom’s health is now failing her. She’s confined in a hospital in Iriga for several days already. Our family is now advised to prepare for the inevitable. I ask for prayers,” De Lima said in her letter.
Muntinlupa Branch 205’s Judge Liezel Aquiatan had granted De Lima’s previous furlough requests.
The court had allowed De Lima to vote last May and attend her the thanksgiving dinner of her son, Vincent Joshua de Lima Bohol, who had just passed the Bar last June. The same branch, however, rejected De Lima’s request to attend her son’s graduation from law school in 2018.
Since her detention on drug charges in February 2017, De Lima has only seen her mother twice, first on 23 December 2018 during a surprise visit at her detention cell, and last 16 June during the thanksgiving dinner of her son.