(Eagle News) — Senator Leila De Lima is in a dilemma as to whether to tell her 84-year old mother about her situation — that she’s already detained for illegal drug trading charges — or continue to keep that information from her.
“My 84-year-old mother has no inkling as to my current situation. What my brothers and sister have told her is that I’m abroad on an official business,” De Lima wrote in her latest letter sent to reporters from the Camp Crame custodial center where she has been detained since February 24.
The senator has been detained for nearly three weeks now but her mother, Norma, was only informed that De Lima was on an extended trip abroad.
“[I] keep debating with myself—shall we tell her or not that her daughter is in prison,” De Lima wrote.
She said her other siblings are also in the same dilemma as they continue to keep the news of her imprisonment from their elderly mother.
“This is a real dilemma for our family,” she wrote.
“I’m sure that she has started to wonder why my foreign trip is taking so long, given my preference for brevity of such trips. My siblings can no longer justify to her my prolonged absence,” De Lima added.
“But knowing the truth about what was done to me by this vengeful President and his ilk will surely cause her misery and grief—an unnecessary pain,” she said.
The lady senator, who had been issuing notes from her detention cell, has earlier vowed that she “cannot be silenced” even if she has been detained for drug charges which she is questioning before the Supreme Court.
She has filed the petition with the high court, also questioning her arrest, claiming this was illegal. She also questioned the jurisdiction of the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court (RTC) which issued a warrant for her arrest, saying it was the anti-graft court, the Sandiganbayan, which should handle her cases.
On Tuesday, March 14, the high court heard the oral arguments on her petition from her lawyer, former solicitor general Florin Hilbay, and on the government’s side, current solicitor general Jose Calida.
At least four magistrates of the Supreme Court (SC) namely, Associate Justices Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Marvic Leonen and Presbitero Velasco, Jr., the justice-in-charge of the case, said De Lima may have prematurely elevated her case to the high court during Tuesday’s start of oral arguments on her petition seeking the nullification of the trial court’s order for her arrest in connection with her alleged involvement in the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) illegal drug trade.
They said she had failed to avail of the “many remedies” available at the level of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Muntinlupa RTC that could have prevented her arrest on the drug trading charges.
The oral arguments will continue on March 21 at the high court.