“There’s little doubt [President Duterte] strong-armed De Lima into jail. She went in, without the benefit of bail, on a charge of conspiracy to sell illegal drugs on the 8th month of his presidency. The supposedly solid evidence presented against her consisted mostly of testimonies of life-term convicts herded by Duterte’s justice secretary, himself the penitentiary’s chief bastonero; there was no money, no drugs, nothing concrete, let alone solid.”
