Leila de Lima: a package of Ambition, Impunity, Delusion, and Sex

Saw the video of Leila de Lima's press conference today with Senate reporters whom she was feeding cake and pancit because her birthday is coming up.

While she was denying Duterte's latest accusations against her, I was reminded of the time she defied a Supreme Court order and arrested the sick Gloria Arroyo at the airport years ago.

I remember wondering at that time, what kind of person is capable of doing something like this?

Even if, granting for the sake of argument, Arroyo was guilty, how can a government official—the Secretary of Justice, no less—flout a Supreme Court order so flagrantly, on live national TV, and not care about the consequences?

People didn't know much about De Lima back then, but after all the revelations that have come out about her in the past days, and after hours of psychoanalysis with friends who are equally hooked on this teleserye, here's our theory on why De Lima is capable of extreme brazen acts.

We call it the "AIDS" hypothesis. AIDS stands for Ambition, Impunity, Delusion, and Sex.

(No offense to actual AIDS sufferers. This acronym is purely coincidental.)

AMBITION
We've seen in the two-day senate hearings that just ended that no one would mistake De Lima for a genius. But she was able to become head of CHR, head of DOJ, and now senator out of sheer ambition and chutzpah. Could it be that it wasn't even Noynoy Aquino who ordered her to defy the Supreme Court order and arrest Arroyo at the airport? Noynoy seems too weak to be capable of something like that. Could it be that De Lima did it on her own, to make pakitang-gilas to her boss and prove to him that there was no line she wouldn't cross? And in return for her loyalty, he got her elected senator.

IMPUNITY
De Lima seems to sincerely believe she is untouchable and indestructible. No matter what she says and does, even if untrue or illegal, she honestly believes she can't be held accountable. This might be part of the reason why she was able to rise to the upper echelons of government despite minimal talent. People who are willing to take big risks and make huge gambles often become more successful than talented people who are risk-averse and worry too much about consequences.

DELUSION
In the case of Steve Jobs, this was called a reality-distortion field. Jobs's creativity was due to him not seeing reality for what it is, but for what it could be. In De Lima's case, her self-image seems to be quite different from how we ordinary folk see her. For example, she has no qualms carrying on like a femme fatale with her driver and the MMDA motorcycle guy despite her advanced age and appearance. She even said in the birthday press con, "I'm about to turn 57, I'm still young." Clearly she sees herself very differently from how we see her. In her mind, she is a young and desirable vixen.

BTW, she admitted in the press con that the MMDA motorcycle guy Warren is still part of her security staff.

SEX
The Bible says money is the root of all evil. But sex is also another root of evil. Duterte said De Lima's "urges" caused her to become entangled in the illegal activities of the men she had "sex escapades" with. I feel kind of sorry for her in this aspect. How many times have we seen old, lonely, sex-starved women taken advantage of by devious men who f*ck them for their money, power, connections, etc? Even her sex video might have been recorded by one of the men she got involved with for future leverage against her.

I wonder why no one from the yellow camp seems to be speaking out to defend De Lima now. She sold her soul to the devil to do their dirty work for them, and now that she's in a bind, they're nowhere to be seen.

De Lima said in her press con that despite all the things happening to her, her spirit can't be broken. This is the AIDS talking, as explained above. She needs to believe that she can't be broken, otherwise she won't be able to go on.

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