DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/27 November) – The City Council here passed on Tuesday afternoon a resolution to “express sympathy” for lawyer Zuleika T. Lopez, chief of staff of the Office of the Vice President (OVP), stating that she was being “coerced and compelled of her right to liberty and due process.”
Davao City Councilor Enzo Villafuerte. MindaNews photo by IAN CARL ESPINOSA
Authored by Councilor Enzo Villafuerte, chair of the Committee on Civil, Political, and Human Rights, the resolution stated that the city council condemns the “act of coercion and compulsion” during Lopez’s stay inside the House of Representatives.
Last November 20, ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro cited Lopez, the former city administrator of Davao under former mayor and now Vice President Sara Duterte, for contempt as she was being “evasive” in answering the questions from the House’s Committee on Good Governance and Accountability.
The committee further extended Lopez’s contempt for five more days on Nov. 25 allegedly due to some inconsistencies in the testimonies of Lopez, which “violated Section 11(f) of the Rules of Procedure governing inquiries, in aid of legislation.”
“On the night of November 22, Atty. Lopez claimed that several men barged into her detention room. She said that the men forced her to read an order of her immediate transfer to a correctional institution for women. Such act of coercion and compulsion of, is argued as an outright violation of her right to liberty and due process as enshrined in Section 1, Article III of the 1987 Constitution,” Villafuerte said in a speech.
Villafuerte added that “any infringement of the fundamental rights of Atty. Zuleika Lopez, a fellow public servant and Davaoeño, demands our utmost sympathy.”
Duterte and her OVP team went to the House premises evening of Thursday last week to visit her ailing chief of staff. The vice president stayed overnight at the office of her brother, Davao City First District Rep. Paolo “Pulong” Duterte.
While being cited for contempt, Lopez was “unresponsive and displayed deadweight,” among other health complications, and was sent to the Veterans Memorial Medical Center and later transferred to St. Luke’s Medical Center.
The vice president also stood with Lopez as her pro bono lawyer when Lopez was not around during the Monday hearing.
Meanwhile, former President Rodrigo Duterte told the media in a press conference at Gran Men Seng Monday that he is “worried that Lopez is probably suffering a heart attack.”
Being a lawyer and former prosecutor, Duterte said that Lopez is not a “criminal” and that being cited for contempt does not equate to committing a crime – “so why is she being transferred to a correctional facility?”
“Citing contempt is just a measure for the orderly conduct of the congressional hearing,” said the 79-year-old former president, who is also a mayoralty candidate in next year’s elections. (Ian Carl Espinosa / MindaNews)
