- Former DOJ Sec. Leila De Lima hits back at Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte
- Duterte said government failed to stop the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison
- De Lima said that Duterte should stop “peddling lies and hurling baseless attacks”
Former Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Leila de Lima criticized Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for his comments accusing the government of failing to do enough to curb the manufacture of drugs inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City.
During the second leg of the PiliPinas Debates 2016 held in the University of the Philippines Cebu campus, Duterte said that the government has not stopped the illegal drug in the national penitentiary.
“This administration allowed shabu to be cooked inside a national penitentiary. Is that your performance?” Duterte told Liberal Party (LP) standard bearer Mar Roxas during the debate.
Reacting to the Davao City Mayor’s claims, De Lima, who is currently running as a Senator under the LP ticket, challenged Duterte to present his proposals instead of “peddling lies.”
“Rather than peddling lies and hurling baseless attacks, Mayor Duterte will be better appreciated if he can present a better proposal for improving our correctional system and sustaining the reforms. It is not true that the Aquino administration did not do anything in fixing the correctional system,” De Lima told the Inquirer in a statement.
In addition, the former DOJ Secretary highlighted her accomplishments when she held the Cabinet post.
“Given the number of times Oplan Galugad was conducted, it should be clear to everyone that there is no shabu laboratory at the NBP. During my term as DOJ Secretary, we instituted reforms in the correctional system. I personally went to the NBP to crack down on these illegal activities. We also demolished the kubols [private rooms] they set up. We then had a new security facility for these high profile inmates,” she said.
Both Duterte and De Lima have had a long-standing animosity with each other. As DOJ Secretary, the senatorial aspirant initiated investigations over the alleged “Davao Death Squads” sanctioned by Duterte under his turf.
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