US Senate call won’t affect de Lima trial, DFA secretary says

A UNITED States Senate resolution calling for the release of Senator Leila M. de Lima, a staunch critic of the Duterte administration, would not affect her trial for drug trafficking, the country’s chief diplomat said.

“Even a Philippine Senate resolution is not one of the ways of ending a criminal trial; there’s only acquittal or conviction or dismissal by a demurrer to evidence. But a US Senate resolution?” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr. said in a social media post on Sunday.

“Aside from separation of powers there’s the independence of nations,” he added.

The US Senate foreign relations committee earlier approved Resolution 142, which urged the government of President Rodrigo R. Duterte to release Ms. de Lima, who has been detained since February 2017 for drug trafficking.

Ms. de Lima, a staunch critic of Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs, is a “prisoner of conscience, detained solely on account of her political views and the legitimate exercise of her freedom of expression,” according to the resolution.

The lawmaker was indicted for allegedly conspiring to commit illegal drug trading inside the national penitentiary when she was the justice secretary.

The committee also called the arrest of Rappler Executive Editor Maria A. Ressa for cyberlibel and tax-related charges “part of a pattern of weaponizing the rule of law to repress independent media.”

“All that said, there’s this to be added about the US Senate Resolution: It is rather representative of American democracy,” Mr. Locsin said in a separate post. — Charmaine A. Tadalan