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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James, this is 7am.

What happens when you have a democratically elected leader who takes it upon themselves to prosecute their political opponents, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to do.

The Philippines is a far more corrupt system, but its former President Rodrigo Duterte is someone who did exactly that.

One such opponent was Leila de Lima - lawyer, politician and human rights activist who opposed Duterte’s death squads and corruption, before she was falsely tarred as a drug lord and locked up for nearly seven years.

Today, Walkley award winning journalist Margaret Simons on Leila de Lima and why the Philippines is the canary in the coalmine for democracy.

It’s Wednesday, December 4.

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DANIEL:

Margaret, you've reported extensively from the Philippines. Can you take us back to 2006 when Duterte had just become president. What was it like in the country at the time?

MARGARET:

So Duterte 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.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“President elect Rodrigo Duterte 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.”

MARGARET:

Promising to end crime through the war on drugs. He promised that if necessary, he would personally kill drug dealers.

Audio Excerpt - Rodrigo Duterte:

“I’d prefer to shoot them in the heart or in the head. If you insist on a drug war, I will kill you all.”

MARGARET:

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.

DANIEL:

And one of the most vocal opponents against Duterte’s drug war was Leila de Lima. Tell us a bit about who she is and how you first heard of her.

MARGARET:

Well, she's a key figure and her story is an extraordinary one.

Audio Excerpt - Leila de Lima:

“Mr. President, my dear colleagues, I rise on matters of personal and collective privilege concerning a number of issues that now dominate the news and divide our people. Our nation is in crisis.”

MARGARET:

I think I've been aware of her ever since I first started reporting on the Philippines, which would be back in about 2015. She's been a prominent lawyer, bureaucrat and also one of the main critics of Rodrigo Duterte, first as head of the Human Rights Commission and then as a senator who was in opposition to him.

Audio Excerpt - Leila de Lima:

“We cannot go on being indifferent to the daily executions without ultimately becoming a nation bound by collective sociopathy.”

MARGARET:

When she was head of the Department of Justice, she oversaw a number of raids on the main prison in the Philippines and discovered, you know, it's really like an episode of Narcos, luxurious villas in which the main drug criminals who were imprisoned were living with Jacuzzi baths and and high end mobile phones.

Audio Excerpt - Leila de Lima:

“Air conditioning units, hot tubs, sex dolls and even music equipment from inmates room and so-called pleasure villas.”

MARGARET:

It was really quite extraordinary, all in the middle of the jail.

Audio Excerpt - Leila de Lima:

“Robbery Group leader Henry Calarco has even been able to record music videos and hold weekly concerts inside a high security facility.”

DANIEL:

A storied career fighting drug lords but her battle with Duterte started before all that, when she was an anti-corruption investigator. Can you tell me about that?

MARGARET:

Well, there are a number of really key investigations that the main one was into what's known as the Davao Death Squad, which was in the city of Davao, which Duterte was at the time mayor of that city.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“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 hog tied and dead days later.”

MARGARET:

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 street criminals, homeless children and so on. And that was really the beginning of her antagonist relationship with the president.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“The ombudsman did charge more than 20 police officers for failure to stop the killings, but that’s as far as it went. Investigators say witnesses are too afraid to talk.”

MARGARET:

Leila de Lima investigated that, but in a strange reversal in Duterte’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.

DANIEL:

So how did de Lima go from being an anti-corruption campaign ad to being accused of the thing that she was fighting against? Can you tell me about some of the evidence that was presented against her?

MARGARET:

Well, her reputation has been thoroughly trashed, of course. In 2016, Duterte began a campaign against her, alleging that she was at the head of a drug network, that she was, in fact, the kingpin of the country's illegal drug trade.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“Senator Leila de Lima was arrested at the senate at the capital early on Friday morning. She’s accused of running an illegal drug syndicate at the national penitentiary when she was justice secretary in the previous government.”

MARGARET:

One of the drug criminals in the prison gave evidence against her claiming that he had paid millions of dollars in bribes, which she supposedly used to finance her campaign to enter the Senate. Her driver, who was also a former lover, gave evidence that he'd been effectively her bagman.

At the same time as Duterte 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. It was fake, but of course, widely believed.

Audio Excerpt - [Birthday song singing]

MARGARET:

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 lord was just one of their colleagues.

Audio Excerpt - [Birthday song singing]

MARGARET:

But again this was again widely circulated, widely believed.

DANIEL:

So within a short space of time we've gone from her being one of the most ferocious anticorruption investigators in the country to being widely and almost universally acknowledged as one of the most corrupt, biggest drug lords in the country. How did it happen so quickly?

MARGARET:

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 has 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 Duterte 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 judgement. In de Lima’s case the secretary of justice did Duterte’s bidding. Several judges did Duterte’s bidding as well, there’s enough corruption for people to not be confident in the courts.

DANIEL:

So her reputation is trashed, she’s framed. What happens next?

MARGARET:

She was then investigated and eventually prosecuted by Duterte’s secretary of justice. The man who occupied the post that de Lima had once occupied and she was jailed.

Leila de Lima was imprisoned in Camp Crame in Quezon 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, 21 days in those conditions.

DANIEL:

After the break - Leila de Lima's fight for freedom - and her warning for democracy.

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DANIEL:

Margaret, after nearly seven years, Leila de Lima was finally free. How did that happen?

MARGARET:

Okay, so she was freed on bail last November, and the final set of charges against her collapsed in June.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“Former Philippines Senator Leila de Lima is free and home. A small crowd of well-wishers greeted her as soon as she stepped out of the airport.”

MARGARET:

Basically the evidence against her collapsed. All the witnesses recanted 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.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“de Lima had said many times before visiting her ailing 91 year old mother is one of the first things she'd do on leaving detention. When she came out of her mother's room. She had this to say.”

Audio Excerpt - Leila de Lima:

“I feel so good and feel so great.”

DANIEL:

Can you tell us about where you met her? Because one of the first media interviews she did after her release, what were some of the things she had to say?

MARGARET:

Yeah, well, I've been obviously trying to get an interview with her for sometime. I asked to interview her in her home. She didn't want to do that. Perhaps understandably, that's a very precious space to her. And so in the end, we just rented a fairly anonymous Manilla office block.

So I asked her if it would be correct to draw comparisons between Donald Trump and Duterte 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 several times that the Philippines is the canary in the coal mine of democracy, if you like.

DANIEL:

Right and so in the face of all of this, what is de Lima going to do now?

MARGARET:

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 mid-term elections next May.

She personally is running very much on continuing the law reform campaign. She wants to outlaw 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.

DANIEL:

And what are her chances of actually getting elected? Or does Duterte’s populism still resonate?

MARGARET:

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 Duterte family. His vice president is Sara Duterte, who's 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 Duterte. The media are a little freer, a little less intimidated than they were under Duterte. 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 democracies around the world. The people who are on the left have enormous trouble convincing a embattled 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 de Lima as well. She's certainly impressive and has an incredible intellect, but she's not particularly charismatic. If you put her up against Rodrigo Duterte with his, you know, his coarse language and his extremist words, it's easy to see that he has the cut through with the ordinary Filipinos who are literally worried about getting enough food for the next meal. Whereas Leila de Lima, 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. As you know, it's an upside down world and it's very hard for the truth to win in that sort of environment.

DANIEL:

Margaret, thank you so much for your time.

MARGARET:

It's a pleasure.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today,

Elon Musk is still not entitled to receive a 56 billion US dollar compensation package for his work as Tesla CEO, a Delaware judge has ruled.

The decision comes despite shareholders voting in June in favour of it.

The judge, Chancellor Kathaleen 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, Woolworths 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 the strike involves 1500 staff and negotiations with the supermarket are ongoing.

I’m Daniel James, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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