Prominent Duterte Critic Removed From Influential Senate Committee

“If I were De Lima, ladies and gentlemen, I’d hang myself”, he said.

Cayetano said the Senate investigations are not for fact-finding on the summary executions that have become rampant after Duterte declared an all-out war against drugs, but to destroy the President.

De Lima’s resolution mentioned the need for the United Nations inquiry in light of the testimony given by self-confessed hit man Edgar Matobato to her erstwhile justice committee implicating the President in the killings of 1,000 people, mostly criminals, when Mr. Duterte was still Davao City mayor.

De Lima is now facing a hearing of her own.

He said self-professed hitman Edgar Matobato would be invited to continue testifying, but argued that there were numerous “inconsistencies in his testimony” against Duterte. “What the dust-up first tells us is that the president calls the shots most of the time, and it is very hard, and takes a lot of time, before resistance can be organized”.

Boxer-turned-politician Manny Pacquiao called for the removal of the official investigating Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war killings and death squad hits in the Philippines, according to multiple reports. The youngest victim was a 4-year-old girl, gunned down as her father took her out to buy popcorn. Some of the 16 senators who voted to oust De Lima as committee chair went on record to say that the President had no input at all in the Senate vote; De Lima herself has said she has no doubt the President was involved.

Senator Richard Gordon replaced De Lima as chairman of the committee.

“Senator de Lima is entitled to her opinion, but we know that the President and the Executive branch do not interfere with whatever is happening at the Senate”.

“I wasn’t referring to the credibility of evidence being presented against her now and against me before, but the degree of harassment that former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her cohorts in practically all the agencies of government were throwing against me”, he said.

“As the Bible says, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul?”

Matobato last Thursday said he and his group killed at least 1,000 people from 1988 to 2013 on orders of President Duterte when he was still mayor of Davao City.

“De Lima was not ousted because of Matobato”. She accused Duterte of trying to silence her.

“I have de Lima’s blessings”, Colangco said, when Congress members asked how he had smuggled contraband into the prison.

The lawyer of convicted robbery and carjack gang leader Herbert Colanggo and several other inmates of the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) claimed that the detainees were not coerced to testify against Sen. “I think a resolution has been filed already here that we also tackle this cases so the senators can also have a chance to question these witnesses as well and to check their veracity of their stories, we will take it from there, doon na namin sila haharapin”, he said. “The investigation is a good thing, to find out the truth of her involvement – it’s just that the way they’re doing it is questionable”.