Silencing the press through our courts!

Just when we wrote about libel in last Friday’s column, we read a report that the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) arrested Malaya publisher Jake Macasaet on charges of libel filed by former Rizal Governor Casimiro Ynares on articles he wrote 9-years ago. This is how slow the wheels of Justice is in this country… this charge was for the articles that Macasaet wrote way back in the year 1999. No doubt aside from having to constantly watch our backs, the biggest threat to Press Freedom are libels suits filed by anyone whose true intention is merely to silence journalists.

What makes a Libel case even worse is that, our Courts of Law cooperate with those who file libel suits by hearing them even if it’s been so long a time that an article has been written. I’m no lawyer, but I would like to believe that there should be some kind of a prescription period where a journalist should no longer cringe in fear over the articles he wrote years back. Indeed, there is a truism when one says that our Courts of Law have also helped silence many journalists. We can only hope that someday, the wheels of Justice would finally turn and I’m not referring to that Bus provided for by the Judiciary to hear cases.

Meanwhile we await with bated breath the outcome of the hearing by a panel ordered by the Supreme Court to look into the controversy surrounding the Court of Appeals (CA). I heard that after this issue is decided, there might be a resignation en masse from all the CA in order for the SC to have a free hand as to whom they should retain and who should be given a “graceful” exit. There is a particular someone with the CA in Cebu who seems to have gained some kind of notoriety… while we can’t name the person, one can read the name of this fellow from the smoke emitting from the rumors in the coffee houses in Cebu.

That the corruption in the Judiciary has tarnished the image of our Judicial system, let me point out once more about what we wrote a few weeks ago that not only are certain Judges or Justices corrupt, even Clerk of Courts are just as corrupt. How do we know this? Because many of our friends in the Law profession openly talk about this and often a lawyer who successfully bought a corrupt Judge would even be allowed to write the Judgment that would be in his favor.

Proof of the pudding is in the eating. Last Friday all the Cebu based newspapers carried in their front pages the story of a Mr. Arvin Oca, Trial Court employee of the First Branch of the Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC) who was entrapped by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for allegedly demanding P150,000 in exchange for suppressing a search warrant against a certain Edgar Garciso. Of course, we will always presume that this Court employee is innocent until proven guilty.

But his case is a clear-cut proof that there’s a lot of hanky-panky going around in our courts of law… that not only are Judges on the take, but even the lower ranked employees. Of course, let me say it here that these corrupt employees and Judges are but a minority in the Judiciary. However when their shenanigans are exposed by the media… it brings utter terror to many of us who are facing court cases (yes, I submit that I too have a pending Libel case that’s a year old now) that your opponent might just buy off either the Clerk of Court or worse the Judge and then you’re really in big trouble. But your trouble doesn’t end when you make you appeals before the CA where Justice still can be bought?

Once more we make another plea for Justice for the Filipino people. The very same plea we had when Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr. was shot and killed and the Filipino people no longer trusted our Courts and marched to the streets to seek the Justice of the Streets. Let’s hope that the Judiciary would straighten things out before indignant Filipinos start marching the streets again to demand for the Justice that they’ve always been denied.

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Here’s a piece of good news. Last week the Visayan Electric Company (VECO) signed a contract with Osram for the company to offer VECO customers a P20 discount on its light bulbs. The reason for this deal is to encourage households to save on electricity by using the new energy efficient light bulbs instead of the old gas-guzzling incandescent lamps. Some 300,000 pieces of discount coupons will be distributed starting Oct. 5 until Oct. 27 and will be valid until December. Studies have shown that using these low-energy light bulbs would save the household up to 80 percent of its power cost per year. This is a great effort by VECO to help reduce the cost of power of its consumers, while getting discounts for the bulbs they would use.       

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow entitled, “Straight from the Sky” shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8 in the evening.