From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. What happens when you have a democratically elected leader who takes it upon themselves to prosecute their political opponents, as US President elect Donald Trump has vowed to do. The Philippines is a far more corrupt system, but its former president,
Rodrigo de Turte, is someone who did exactly that. One such opponent was Lylah de Leima, lawyer, politician and human rights activist who opposed to Turta's death squads and corruption before she was falsely tired as a drug lord and locked up for nearly seven years. Today, Walkley Award winning journalist Margaret Simon's a Lilah de Lema and why the Philippines is the canary in the coal mine for democracy. It's Wednesday, December four, Margie. You've reported extensively from the Philippines.
Can you take us back to twenty sixteen when Dette had just become president. What was it like in the country at that time?
So De Tourte was a classic populist politician. He had been a mayor. He had a support base in that region of the Philippines, and he came to political prominence nationally, promising to clear up corruption.
President of that Rodrigo de Erte promised to crush crime and illegal drugs in six months. The goal, he said, is to create an investor friendly environment that would spur economic growth.
Promising to end crime through the war on drugs. He promised that if necessary, he would personally kill drug dealers.
I'd prefer to feut them in the heart for in behead.
If you insist on a drug war, I will.
So people knew what they were getting. He didn't hide what he was planning to do, and he did, in fact, of course, carry that out.
And one of the most vocal opponents against the Turta's drug war was Lola Delima. Tell us about who she is and how you first heard of her.
Well, she's a key figure and her story is an extraordinary one.
Mister President, my dear colleagues, I rise on matters of personal and collective privilege concerning a number of issues that not dominate the news and divide our people. Our nation is in crisis, this crisis.
And I think I've been aware of her ever since I first started reporting on the Philippines, which would be back in about twenty fifteen. She's been a prominent lawyer, bureaucrat and also one of the main critics of Rodrigo de turte first as head of the Human Rights Commission and then as a senator who was in opposition to him.
We cannot go on being indifferent to the daily executions without ultimately becoming a nation bound by a collective sociopathy.
When she was head of the Department of Justice, she oversaw a number of raids on the main prison in the Philippines and discovered it's really like an episode of NACo's Luxurious Villas, in which the main drug criminals who were imprisoned were living with jacuzzi bars and high end mobile phones.
Air conditioning units, hot tubs, sex dolls, and even music equipment from inmates room and so called pleasure villains.
It was really quite extraordinary, all in the middle of thegile.
Robbery group leader Henley Kolanco has even been able to record music videos in hoold weekly concerts inside a high security facility.
A storied career of fighting drug lords, but her battle with the Turtei started before all that, when she was an anti corruption investigator. Can you tell me about that?
Well, there were a number of really key investigations, but the main one was in Watson known as the Devo's Death Squad, which was in the city of Devoo, which Deturtay was at the time mayor of that city.
In the mid nineties, rising criminality in Davao also saw an increase in summary executions. Many of them were abducted under cover of darkness, only to appear hogtied and dead days later.
And there were allegations that there was a crowd of vigilantes who was sponsored by him, who were murdering both enemies of his but also straight criminals, homeless children and so on, And that was really the beginning of her antagonistic relationship with the president.
The ombudsman did charge more than twenty police officers for failure to stop the killings, but that's as far as it went. Investigators say witnesses are too afraid to talk.
Delima investigated that, but in a strange reversal in the tourte's world, and it's a great example of misinformation, she suddenly became not the person who was persecuting the drug criminals, but actually the head of their network.
So how did Lena go from being an anti corruption campaign into being accused of the thing that she was fighting against. Can you tell me about some of the evidence that was presented against her?
Well, her reputation has been thoroughly trashed, of course. In twenty sixteen, de Turte began a campaign against her alleging that she was head of a drug network, that she was in fact the king ben of the country's illegal drug trade.
Senator Lailah Delima was arrested at the Senate in the capitol early on Friday morning. She's accused of running an illegal drug syndicate at the National Penitentiary, which she was just as secretary in the previous government.
One of the drug criminals in the prison and gave evidence against her, claiming that he had paid her millions of dollars in bribes, which she supposedly is to finance her campaign to enter the Senate. Her driver, who was also a former lover, gave evidence that he had been effectively her bagman. So at the same time as Deturte released his evidence, fake videos began to circulate online. Suddenly there were numerous copies of a supposed sex video of
her with this driver circulating online. If it was fake, but of course widely believed. She was supposedly shown in one video singing at a birthday party alongside a drug lord. In fact, she was singing at her own birthday party, and the supposed drug award was just one of her colleagues that this was again widely circulated widely believe.
So within a short space of time, we've gone from her being one of the most ferocious any corruption investigators in the country to being wildly and almost universally acknowledged as one of the most corrupt, biggest drug lords in the country. How did that happen so quickly?
It's a real topsy turvy world. But the terrifying thing is exactly as you say that it happened with great speed and seemingly great ease, And there are good reasons for that. Facebook is very cunningly in the Philippines and some other developing countries, has done deals with the phone companies so that use of Facebook is free of data charges which are otherwise prohibitive for the poor. Facebook is
the Internet. They use the terms interchangeably, and so when misinformation began to be used by Dette and others, it very quickly infected the popular mindset in the Philippines. The legal system in the Philippines suffers from corruption. That's a long standing problem. I wouldn't want to say that all judges are corrupt, but certainly I think the average citizen with some foundation has little faith that they can get a fair judgment. In Deleima's case, the Secretary of Justice
did to Toto's bidding. Several judges did Detto's bidding as well. There's enough corruption for people not to be able to be confident of the courts.
So her reputation is trashed. She's framed. What happens next?
She was then investigated and eventually prosecuted by Detererte's Secretary of Justice that the band who occupied the post that Dilema had once occupied, and she was jailed. Laila Delima was prisoned in Camp Crime in Kazon City, the jail for high profile detainees. She had very small quarters there, no air conditioning, no electronic devices, very basic living conditions. She spent a total of nearly seven years to be exact, six years, eight months, twenty one days in those conditions.
After the break Layla Delema's fight for freedom and their warning for democracy, Margaret after being locked up for nearly seven years, Laala Delima was finally free. How did that happen?
Okay? So she was freed on bail last November, and the final set of charges against her collapsed. In June.
Former Philippine Senator A Leila Delimos free and home. A small crowd twelve wisher has greeted her as soon as she stepped out of the airport.
Basically, the evidence against her collapse. All the witnesses werecanted and said that they had been both bribed and coerced and intimidated into giving evidence against her, and so in the end there was simply no evidence left.
Mud said many times before visiting her Ailien ninety one year old mother is one of the first things she'd do on leaving the tension. Well, she came out of her mother's room, she had this to say.
I feel so good, I feel so great.
Can you tell us about where you met it? It was one of the first media interviews she did after her release. What were some of the things that she had to say?
Yeah, well, I've been obviously trying to get an interview with her for some time. I asked to interview her in her home. She didn't want to do that. Perhaps understandably, that's a very precious face to her. And so in the end, we just rented a fairly anonymous Manila office block. So I asked her if it would be correct to draw comparisons between Donald Trump and Deturte, and she readily
entered into that. She said that both of them were misogynists, both of them were autocratic by instinct, both were liars, and both came with criminal propensities. The famous journalist Maria Ressa, one of the bravest women in the Philippines, has said that the Philippines is the canary in the coal mine of democracy if you like.
Right, And so in the face of all this, what is Delima going to do now?
Well, she has extraordinary resilience because just three months after the collapse of the final set of charges against her, she announced that she was re entering politics and would contest the midterm elections next May. She personally is running very much on continuing a law reform campaign. She wants to outlaw the family dynasties in politics. She wants to give more force to the Human Rights Commission. So she's very much a legal and human rights reformer.
And whatever chances of actually getting elected, or does Detererte's populism still resonate.
Well, I wouldn't want to put money on it. The current president is Ferdinand Marcos, who came to power in an alliance with the Dette family. His vice president is Sarah de Turte, whose daughter of the former president. Things I think it's fair to say are a bit better, or not quite as bad. There are certainly still drug killings by the police, but there aren't as many as there were at the height of the killings under Dette. The media are a little freer, a little less intimidated
than they were under Dette. But in terms of the economy, there's no real sign that things are improving. And I think this is a problem that we face in liberal democracy sees around the world. The people who are on the left have enormous trouble convincing a in battle population that they understand their problems or their issues. They seem very remote from the lives of ordinary people. Now, I
would say this is true of Delema as well. She's certainly impressive and an incredible intellect, but she's not particularly charismatic. If you put her up against Rodrida Deterto. With his coarse language and his extremist words, it's easy to see that he has the cut through with the ordinary Filipino who's literally worried about getting enough food for the next meal, Whereas Lello of Dilema talking about the importance of human rights doesn't necessarily resonate, but certainly you can see the
impact of misinformation. Many ordinary Filipinos either think she's still in jail, or if they know she's out of jail, they think it must be because she is so powerful and corrupt. So it's an upside down world, and it's very hard for the truth to win in that sort of environment.
Margaret, thank you so much for your time.
It's a pleasure.
Also in the news today, Elon Musk is still not entitled to receive a fifty six billion dollar US compensation package for his work as Tesla's CEO. Aduble Word judge is ruled. The decision comes despite shareholders voting in June in favor of it. The judge, Chancellor Kathleen McCormick, found the pay package to be excessive, the second time she's
reached that conclusion in the past year. In a statement on x, Tesla said the ruling is wrong and the company will appeal and Willworth has lodged an urgent application with the Fair Work Commission to stop United Workers union members from blocking access to its major distribution centers. The action has led to empty shelves and a shortage of items including nappies, toilet paper and bread. The union says to strike involves fifteen hundred staff in Negotiations with the
supermarket are ongoing. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.