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The former senator — detained for several years under the previous Duterte administration — stages a political comeback
MANILA, Philippines – Former senator Leila de Lima announced Friday, September 20, a comeback to politics as the lead nominee of Mamamayang Liberal — the “sectoral wing” of the once-ruling Liberal Party — for a seat in the House of Representatives.
“Walang atrasan. Tuloy na tuloy na ang laban (No turning back. The fight continues)! In all humility and conviction, I accepted today the nomination as a lead nominee of the party list Mamamayang Liberal (ML), the sectoral wing of the Liberal Party (LP), for next year’s elections,” De Lima said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
The announcement from De Lima came after the Liberal Party gathered its National Executive Council for a meeting on the 2025 national and local elections at the historic Club Filipino in San Juan City.
Joining De Lima as nominees of Mamamayang Liberal are two other stalwarts of the Liberal Party, former district representatives Teddy Baguilat and Erin Tañada. Mamamayang Liberal was officially accredited as a party-list group by the Commission on Elections in June 2024.
De Lima, a former justice secretary and human rights lawyer, was detained for over seven years under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte. In the early years of the Duterte administration and the former Davao mayor’s notorious drug war, De Lima was among the loudest in what was, even then, a diminished opposition led by the Liberal Party.
Her career in the legislature was almost immediately cut short as she rose in prominence as a Duterte critic.
After she led a probe into Duterte’s drug war — both as president and Davao mayor — De Lima almost immediately faced a slew of drug-related cases. She was finally released from detention in November 2023 and cleared of all charges filed against her in June 2024.
De Lima served as justice secretary to the late president Benigno Aquino III, only leaving the post in October 2015 when she launched a successful bid for a Senate seat in the 2016 elections. Before that, she led the Commission on Human Rights, including when it tried to probe allegations of summary executions in Davao under Duterte. – Rappler.com
