Sotto to US senators: Mind your own business

At least two senators scored their counterparts in the United States for allegedly meddling into the affairs of the Philippines when they condemned, in a resolution, the continued detention of Senator Leila de Lima and called for her immediate release.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III said the US senators should mind their own business.

“To our US counterparts— ‘mind your own business, scratch your own galis’— that's what my kalaro says when I was young,” Sotto said in a post on Twitter, tagging US Senator Marco Rubio who was one of the authors of the resolution.

To our US counterparts- “mind your own business, scratch your own galis”• that's what my kalaro says when I was young. @marcorubio

— Tito Sotto (@sotto_tito) April 9, 2019

He added the Philippines is no longer a commonwealth of the US.

“Ano tayo, commonwealth pa nila? Ni hindi nila alam ang background ng judiciary natin. Eh kung mag-file kami ng resolution asking them to release a suspect, payag sila?” he said.

Senator Panfilo Lacson, over the weekend, said a Philippine Senate resolution is appropriate to call out the five US senators.

“We are not their colony. We have a Constitution that provides for three co-equal branches and a judicial system where due process is followed, regardless of its flaws and weaknesses,” he said.

A Ph Senate resolution is appropriate to call out these 5 US senators. We are not their colony. We have a Constitution that provides for three(3) co-equal branches and a judicial system where due process is followed, regardless of its flaws and weaknesses.

— PING LACSON (@iampinglacson) April 7, 2019

A bipartisan group of US Senators—Democrats Ed Markey, Chris Coons, and Dick Durbin and Republicans Rubio and Marsha Blackburn—filed a resolution condemning the detention of De Lima. 

They also condemned the "state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings" in the Philippines as part of the Duterte administration's war on drugs, and called for the dropping of charges against Rappler CEO Maria Ressa.

Earlier in the day, De Lima said she sees as a source of hope the support she is receiving from international personalities and organizations. 

“Amid the vilification before the whole world by the most powerful official in the Philippines, I stand here fighting, knowing that there are still many out there who believe in me and my causes,” De Lima said in a press statement Tuesday.

She said criticisms over the support she is getting from the international community, much less the US Senate, will never remove the fact that the five senators and other foreign dignitaries before them are “speaking in behalf of all the unjustly treated human rights defenders in the Philippines.”

“Instead of bewailing their alleged ‘meddling,' those who negatively reacted to the US Senators’ move should recognize that these foreign entities are simply advancing universal causes of justice, human rights and democracy,” she said. —LDF, GMA News