Press Release
March 26, 2019

Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Reply to 'Honesty' Open Letter

Dear Inday Sara,

Greetings from my detention quarters!

I am flattered that you took the time to write me an open letter. I hoped that my dispatches gave you the opportunity to examine yourself and the direction that your life is heading.

Ever since it is talked about that most of the candidates you are campaigning for are dishonest, puro pagpapalusot na lang ang ginawa mo. There is no need to play semantics with me. Your words may sway the weak-willed and the uninformed, but they don't affect me. I'm neither weak-willed nor uninformed. Hindi uubra sa akin ang mga palusot mo.

Public office is a public trust. Period. Full stop. Anyone who seeks public office must have honesty and integrity. Candidates included. What kind of idiot would think that a dishonest candidate will be an honest public official?

I have nothing personal against you. I can only imagine what you had to endure as your father's daughter. I only speak as someone who loves her country.

You are young and you have your life still ahead of you. You are given this platform by your father to say anything you want in a national scope without accountability. Politicians are stumbling over themselves trying to vie for your support. Even without a television set and radio, I can see from the newspapers and online news (as printed) that you seem to be celebrating the unprecedented amount of spotlight and attention that you are experiencing for the first time in your life.

If I may give you an unsolicited advice, do not fool yourself. The spotlight and lavish attention is not for you, it is for your father. And the politicians you surround yourself with are not there because they believe in your vision. They're there because they want to use you.

Unless you are one of them, don't waste your life defending the dishonest, the corrupt, and the people whom you know will abuse their office. Your ambition should not take precedence over our country's future.

Use your platform to fight for a better Philippines. Do the right thing. Stop campaigning for trapos and misfits.

Sincerely yours,

Leila

P.S. Spare me with your rhetoric of my supposed involvement in drug trading. You and I know it's not true. No right-thinking person would believe that it's true. That narrative is propagated by known liars, your father and his lapdogs included, because it is their way of avoiding their own crimes and accountabilities. The fact that you peddle this lie shows that you, the person who absurdly argues that honesty is not important, are part of the dishonesty that is destroying our country.

P.P.S. Stop making "Black Hole" happen. It's not going to happen.

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