MANILA, Philippines — "Tell him when I see him, I will punch him in the face."

Sen. Ronald de la Rosa had this to say to a self-confessed drug lord who testified before a hearing at the House of Representatives on Friday that the then Philippine National Police chief pressured him to implicate former senator Leila de Lima as a supplier and protector of drug kingpins.

Testifying before the QuadComm, Kerwin Espinosa said de la Rosa applied the pressure on him after he arrived from Abu Dhabi, where he was arrested for illegal possession of firearms and explosives. De la Rosa was with the PNP team that brought Espinosa home from Abu Dhabi.

In a statement late Friday, de la Rosa said that Espinosa was a drug lord, was "not a credible witness and should not be believed."

"I only spoke to him once when I went to his prison cell and asked him about Espenido. Other than that, we have had no conversation,'' said de la Rosa in Filipino when asked to comment on Espinosa's testimony.

When asked if he planned to attend the House Qualcomm hearings, de la Rosa said, "Never, never, never."

On his message to Espinosa, de la Rosa said: "Tell him, 'When I see that, I will punch him in the face. If he can talk like that, if he can talk, you'd think he's clean. Why would he make up a story? Whereas he was very kind when he was in our custody. He's so kind, but now he's saying something."

De Lima said, however, that the senator needed to face the "reckoning of the truth."

De Lima, who is running as the first nominee of the Mamamayang Liberal party-list in the 2025 midterm elections, said she knew for a long time that Espinosa was only forced to implicate her on former president Rodrigo Duterte's "wishes."

"We have known for a long time that Kerwin Espinosa was forced to implicate me in illegal drugs because of Duterte's wishes," she wrote on her social media platforms on Friday night. "Finally, one of the masterminds in the fabrication of evidence is none other than former PNP chief Bato de la Rosa."

"Bato now has to face the reckoning of the truth in the lies against me by the Duterte administration," she added.

Aside from de Lima, Espinosa said de la Rosa also told him to link Cebu businessman Peter Lim to the illegal drug trade, and additionally, asked him to admit that he was a "major drug trafficker."

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