False step

For the longest time, Sen. Leila de Lima was enjoying the benefit of the doubt about her verboten dalliance with her driver. Pressed by the media for categorical answers, she equivocated and kept everyone in suspense about it.  She nonchalantly stayed the course by rabbiting on about her personal integrity and womanly virtues. Over time, she deftly buried that issue and almost consigned it to oblivion—until recently, when she let the other shoe drop and by her own mouth removed all doubt.

No, we are not talking about her complicity with the putative drug lords in the New Bilibid Prison. The nexus between her romantic confession and the shenanigans in the drug trade there is still blurry and fraught with speculations. For instance, to say that her driver was her lover, ergo, also her bagman, is too much of a non sequitur.

But what should really bother De Lima now is the administrative case being cooked up to have her disbarred.

A lawyer bound by the Code of Professional Responsibility which punishes “immoral conduct,” she has dug a deep hole she may no longer be able to claw her way out of.

Guevara vs Eala (AC  No. 7136, Aug. 1, 2007), which disbarred a lawyer committing adultery, had this to say:   “While it has been held in disbarment cases that the mere act of sexual intercourse between two unmarried adults is not sufficient to warrant administrative  sanction for such illicit behavior, it is not so with respect to betrayals of the marital vow of fidelity. Even if not all forms of extramarital relations are punishable under the penal laws, sexual relations outside marriage is considered disgraceful and immoral and indicative of an extremely low regard for the fundamental ethics of his profession. This detestable behavior renders him regrettably unfit and undeserving of the treasured honor and privileges which his license confers upon him.”

Before then, there was no incontrovertible proof of De Lima’s extramarital affair with a married man. She seemed to have made sure he stayed below everyone else’s radar and totally incommunicado. All her detractors had were perceptions and innuendoes—no good evidence in a court of law.

So what the heck happened? Has the “us against the whole world” syndrome gotten the best of her, too? Has she forgotten about “the right against self-incrimination”—which so many rascals have been habitually invoking at congressional hearings? She is a brilliant lawyer.  How could she have missed that?

STEPHEN L. MONSANTO, Monsanto Law Office, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, [email protected]