WITHOUT mentioning names, President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday took another dig at Senator Leila de Lima, referring to her as a porn actress.
Saying he is the favorite whipping boy of human rights advocates, Duterte said the person who hates him most was the subject of an X-rated film.
“And there was—a now famous actress on a short run of an x-rated film, she would taunt me always. And I knew then, and I know now that she is arrogant,” Duterte said.
Duterte has never denied his animosity for De Lima, who had sought to pin him to vigilante killings in Davao City when he was still mayor, and when she was still the commissioner on Human Rights and later, when she was Justice secretary.
In an earlier speech, Duterte insinuated that De Lima had a sex video with her long time driver-bodyguard, Ronnie Palisoc Dayan.
Duterte called his rival as an “immoral woman” and an “adulterer,” adding that Dayan collected drug money for the former Justice secretary from drug lords in the New Bilibid Prison.
De Lima had since repeatedly denied having a sex video tape, adding that the President is trying to manufacture evidence against her.
Meanwhile, failed senatorial candidate Francis Tolentino asked the Senate Electoral Tribunal to nullify the “fraudulent and sham” proclamation of De Lima.
De Lima ran under the ticket of the then ruling Liberal Party of former President Benigno Aquino III while Tolentino ran as independent candidate allied with Duterte.
De Lima obtained 14,144,070 over Tolentino’s 12,811,098 or a difference of 1,332,972.
In a 60-page amended election protest, Tolentino asked the SET to compel the Comelec to open the Automated Election System (AES) to forensic audit and investigation to determine the nature, extent, effect and consequences of the unauthorized manipulation made by Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia and to order the Comelec to institute adequate measures to correct such unauthorized access to, and interference with the AES.
Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon said they already had a briefing on the amended election protest filed by Tolentino, former chairman of the Metro Manila Development Authority.
They had agreed to come out with the decision before the end of the present Congress.
Drilon could not say if they would accept the protest and hear the complaint, saying procedural aspects, including payment of fees, needed to be ironed out.