Philippine Senator Leila de Lima has done herself a thorn in a side of argumentative President Rodrigo Duterte. The BBC’s South East Asia match Jonathan Head profiles a polarising figure, as partial of a array on a Asian women expected to make a news in 2017.
Six months into his presidency Rodrigo Duterte dominates a Philippines in a approach no personality has given a days of Ferdinand Marcos.
His plain-spoken profanities and unpretentious care style, his shockingly aroused debate opposite drugs, and his indeterminate process shifts have guaranteed him consistent media attention, and helped contend clever recognition ratings in a nation inspired for change.
He appals magnanimous Filipinos and tellurian rights advocates, yet is seen as a saviour by others. Families have been bitterly divided over a president; amicable media explanation about Mr Duterte has been ardent and mostly abusive. The boss has a skilled, some contend manipulative, amicable media team.
The thespian groundswell of support that propelled a former mayor of Davao, a really late contender, to a presidency, swayed politicians even from antithesis parties to chuck their support behind him in both houses of Congress, combining what is famous as a “supermajority”. In outcome he started his six-year tenure with no grave opposition.
Among a handful of politicians who have stood adult to a boss is Senator Leila de Lima, a counsel who served as probity secretary in a effusive administration.
Her epic, unsymmetrical conflict with Mr Duterte and his allies, holding place opposite a backdrop of Congressional inquiries and pale allegations and counter-allegations in a media, has gripped a country.
‘Narcissist’ contra ‘immoral woman’
Senator de Lima primarily chaired a parliament exploration into a extrajudicial killings of drug suspects, that increasing dramatically after President Duterte took office.
She brought in an purported former genocide patrol member from his home city of Davao to attest that Mr Duterte himself had taken partial in extrajudicial killings there while he was mayor, something he has both denied and confirmed.
He has responded by accusing her of receiving payments from drug lords jailed in a country’s biggest jail while she was probity secretary.
In Sep his allies in a Senate had her private from chairing a inquiry, that afterwards irreproachable President Duterte of impasse in extrajudicial killings. At slightest 5 rapist complaints have been done opposite her, nonetheless she has not been indicted.
She has called him a “tired aged narcissist” with a spirit unsuitable to anticipating durability solutions to a country’s problems.
He has called her an “immoral woman”, and suggested she should hang herself. His allies in a Congress have launched their possess review into Senator de Lima, exposing pale sum of her attribute with her driver, and removing detained drug dealers to attest opposite her.
‘Never asked to be controversial’
Leila de Lima was innate in 1957 and brought adult in a Bicol segment of a categorical island of Luzon. Her father was a counsel and ran a inhabitant Election Commission in a 1990s.
Ms De Lima also complicated law, graduating with a 8th tip outlines in a nation in 1985. She has dual sons, yet her matrimony finished in 2001, something she blames on her joining to her work.
She used law, with an pause operative in a House of Representatives, before being allocated as chair of a Commission on Human Rights by then-President Gloria Arroyo in 2008.
Already famous for being an outspoken disciple of “justice yet fear or favour”, she launched an review into allegations that afterwards mayor Rodrigo Duterte was using genocide squads in Davao in his renouned anti-crime campaign.
She hold a array of hearings in Davao in 2009, yet was incompetent to find witnesses or transparent justification that related Mr Duterte or a military to a puzzling strike squads that killed some-more than 1,000 people over a prior decade, many of them children.
When she was allocated probity secretary in 2010 by the-President Benigno Aquino III she showed an undivided eagerness to go after high-profile people.
In 2011, she had former-President Arroyo arrested as she was about to house a moody to find sanatorium diagnosis overseas. In 2013, she filed rapist charges opposite 3 distinguished senators for purported injustice of growth funds.
She also took on a country’s third largest church, Iglesia ni Cristo, over an purported abduction case, call vast demonstrations outward her office.
Some even sensitive commentators indicted a Justice Secretary of seeking controversy, of fighting too many of her battles by media publicity.
“Some have called me a argumentative open figure,” she pronounced final year.
“I will not and can't repudiate that. But we never asked to be controversial. In fact, it would have been unfit to sojourn uncontroversial when high form cases kept arising. The usually approach to keep a low form is not to do anything value open notice.”
Her critics, though, contend that in use not many altered in a bad opening of a probity complement underneath her watch. In sold they indicate to a proliferation of drug dealing, even manufacturing, in a New Bilibid Prison, a country’s largest.
Ms De Lima herself led a well-publicised raid on a jail in Dec 2014.
Behind a drab exteriors of a cells assigned by some of a many apparent inmates they detected startling levels of oppulance – saunas, fully-stocked bars, an inflatable sex doll, mobile phones, and bonds of narcotics and firearms.
Nineteen prisoners were eliminated and several officials punished. But stories of drug-dealing in a jail continued, so that in Jul this year a using of it was taken over by military special forces.
President Duterte has used a jail liaison to disprove Senator de Lima.
His allies brought 10 people, 7 of them jail inmates, to attest to a House of Representatives exploration that drug income was paid to Ms De Lima’s driver, and lover, to assistance account her debate for a parliament seat.
The driver, Ronnie Dayan, with whom Ms De Lima admits carrying a seven-year regretful relationship, also testified opposite her.
Going down fighting?
Senator de Lima has discharged all a allegations as absurd; her friends indicate out that she has no apparent signs of wealth, and they disagree that it is easy for an administration as widespread as President Duterte’s to require people, generally prisoners, to pronounce opposite her. She has positively done copiousness of enemies in her career.
Her personal life has been laid out in what contingency be agonizing detail; she has been vilified by President Duterte’s supporters on amicable media.
She has few allies in mainstream politics, and nothing that can assistance her take on a Duterte roller-coaster. Her destiny now hangs on intensity rapist indictments, and on moves to frame her of her parliament seat.
Yet Senator de Lima stays defiant, insisting she will be vindicated, and job now for general involvement to examine a drug killings.
She continues to debate opposite a reintroduction of a genocide penalty. This month she was celebrated by a US announcement Foreign Policy as one of the tip Global Thinkers of 2016, for her eagerness to “stand adult to an nonconformist leader”.
If she is going down, she is going down fighting.