“DON'T lie to me. I called all the agents: PDEA, military, police, NBI. You know you’ve been suspected as a drug lord... Call your lawyer to prove that you’re innocent.”
--President Duterte to Cebu businessman Peter Lim
NINE days after President Duterte named a Peter Lim, with two others, as top three drug lords in the country, he told Cebu’s Peter Lim in his face he was the one, the same Peter Lim whom he would kill once he stepped on airport tarmac.
Duterte repeated the kill threat last Saturday, July 16: “Sige ‘commute’ diri sa Pilipinas. Sunod balik nimo, tiwasan gyud tika.”
It sounded definite. Peter Lim whom Duterte had exposed is the Peter Lim who, with his brother Wellington, was investigated by a House committee on drugs in Cebu City in 2006. The committee found “probable cause” against him but Department of Justice and NBI did not or could not “fortify” the evidence.
Ten years hence, Peter Lim is still a suspect in all the agencies’ lists.
But is there enough evidence to charge him before prosecutors and the courts? Apparently not, otherwise Peter Lim would’ve been detained after his Davao “surrender.”
What happens next? Will Peter Lim present evidence of good behavior and innocent trips abroad?
NBI that would hear Peter Lim is the same agency that failed the House body’s recommendation a decade ago.
Shouldn’t NBI and those other agencies instead pool their evidence and give Peter Lim his “day in court” by indicting him?
Not like others
Weird? “Mo lang.” Poor Peter Lim? Only as as far as he’s prematurely adjudged guilty.
He is affluent and influential: he can fight the legal battle. Unlike the really poor crime suspects, Peter Lim has not suffered the fate of small-time suspected drug dealers who were killed before they could “prove their innocence.”
[paseares@gmail.com]
