Senator de Lima is now campaigning from prison. The charges against her when she was imprisoned in February 2017 were largely brought by convicts in prison who were given some kind of incentive by the government. Many of them have now disappeared.
She remains in prison. Part of the reason seems to be based on the actions of President Duterte and his words, which were that she had used her position in the senate to begin investigations into the brutal drug war. He had threatened her; she was arrested and is now in prison without bail.
It happened so early—in 2017—that even journalists were stunned by this. I thought that if a government is doing this, there must be something there. Then, of course, when the charges against me were just lies, I began to realize later on that this is a pattern and law has been weaponized.