De Lima asks SC to reverse ruling on habeas data plea vs Duterte
MANILA, Philippines — Detained Sen. Leila de Lima has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its dismissal of her plea for habeas data against President Rodrigo Duterte, calling the ruling a “twisted” application of presidential immunity.
De Lima, through her lawyer Chel Diokno, filed a motion for reconsideration on Wednesday urging the SC to reverse its Oct. 15, 2019 ruling that junked her petition citing Duterte’s immunity from suit while president.
"The resolution twisted the doctrine of presidential immunity out of all sense of meaning, gave Mr. Rodrigo Duterte a blanket license to slut-shame and discriminate against any women who tickles his fancy, and deprive petitioner (and other similarly situated women) of an effective remedy," the senator said in her motion.
De Lima sought relief from the SC to compel Duterte to give her access to information collected in the allegations thrown by the government against her. She specifically cited statements from the president saying he “will have to destroy her in public” and calling her an “immoral woman” with “a very sordid personal and official life.”
‘Unbridled powers’
The SC, in junking De Lima’s plea, stressed that the presidential immunity “makes no distinction with regard to the subject matter of the suit; it applies whether or not the acts subject matter of the suit are part of his duties and functions as President.”
But De Lima reiterated that her case presents a “novel issue of transcendental importance” as it questions acts of a president “that are clearly and obviously outside the scope of official conduct.”
She said that the dismissal of her plea has also “inoculated the President from accountability for egregious conduct, and placed an insurmountable barrier to the search for truth and the vindication of basic rights.”
With the SC ruling, Duterte was also given “untrammelled and unbridled power to slut-shame, discriminate, insult and offend and bad-mouth” De Lima so long as he remains as the incumbent president, she argued.
The senator noted that Duterte, on January 23, referred to her in a speech where the president insinuated sexual actions and cursed her.
She also raised that the SC resolution gives Duterte power to verbally attack any other woman who will be left with no legal remedy for relief so long as he sits as president.
De Lima also claimed that since she was left with no legal remedy against Duterte, the ruling violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty signed in 1986.
The treaty imposes upon states that ratified it the duty to protect civil and political rights, including the right to dignity, gender equality, freedom from discrimination and freedom from unlawful interference with one’s privacy.
De Lima has been detained at the police headquarters in Quezon City due to the government’s drug charges against her. She is accused of having a hand in the proliferation of the drug trade inside the national penitentiary during her stint as Justice secretary, an accusation she has denied.
De Lima earlier accused the government of using public resources to pin her down.
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