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Leila de Lima: GMANews.TV's Public Servant of the Year


To the legion of critics of its human rights record, the Arroyo administration has a lot to apologize for. Leila de Lima doesn’t apologize. She attacks. As chair of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), de Lima could easily be an apologist for the government she serves. Instead, to the surprise of many in the human rights community, she has been a steadfast voice inside the system denouncing a wide range of violations, including the rub-outs of suspected criminals and even the blindfolding of detained rebel soldiers. According to Paulynn P. Sicam, a former human rights commissioner, “Leila is what the framers of the constitution had in mind when they created the post of CHR chair, a courageous and independent-minded person who can stand up to the police, the military, the administration, not to mention warlords, but who will not hesitate to right a human rights violation committed against anybody, even a murder suspect like the young Ampatuan."

In the Arroyo administration, de Lima has often sounded like a lone voice in the wilderness.
Human rights lawyer Theodore Te calls de Lima “a revelation in the sense that she was known simply as an election lawyer for the opposition and was not known as a human rights person. Yet, from her appointment she has managed to transform the CHR into a high-profile watchdog." She has rarely hesitated to weigh in on the greatest issues of the day, serving as a moral compass for a government that many citizens believe has lost its way. In the wake of the apprehension of massacre suspect Andal Ampatuan Jr., de Lima said, “The arrest as the first of many interventions had, as many perceived, come rather slowly and we hope that the focus on filing murder charges against Ampatuan, Jr. does not remove attention from the other accountabilities of the government which must be addressed." “We have yet to see the Executive Department explore and apply the remedies of administrative complaints and preventive suspension under the Local Government Code against Governor Ampatuan and various local officials," De Lima continued. “There are several actors who must be held accountable for the massacre and the aftermath of it. This must not be lost in fever-pitch focus on the filing of criminal charges against the alleged mastermind, Mayor Ampatuan, Jr. Everyone who directly or indirectly took part in the massacre, including local officials and the police, must be subjected to every remedy under the law." For her courage and independent-mindedness in speaking out even against colleagues in government and for helping keep human rights on the public agenda with timely and forceful words, Leila de Lima is GMANews.TV’s Public Servant of the Year, an annual accolade that this news site is awarding for the first time this year. De Lima, a former election lawyer appointed chairperson of the CHR in May 2008, was not an obvious choice. She has not been in the public limelight that long. Others that we considered are more famous. When GMANews.TV staff members were developing the idea of honoring one public servant every year, we identified the following criteria: courage, engagement in public service, ability to inspire, and quality of achievement. On all fronts, Leila de Lima came out on top, although in a close contest. Choices like this are inevitably subjective and subject to intense debate. But we will admit that the choice reflects a staff bias for human rights and a concern about its declining importance to the public and to the government. Human rights, in fact, have become code words in some rightist circles for sympathy with communists or with the enemies of government. In the last two decades, human rights have indeed become an ideological battleground where government forces have often accused advocates of invoking human rights to constrict military action or weaken government resolve to defeat the communist insurgency. De Lima is helping return human rights to its rightful place as a supreme value in civilized society, where the first to come to its defense must be its government. - Howie Severino, GMANews.TV
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