ANTI-NAPOLES BRIEF I already filed my Counter-Affidavit against the libel complaint of Janet Lim-Napoles. For those who are minded, you may read the Counter-Affidavit below. Counter-Affidavit In the Name of The People of the Philippines I, BERTENI CATALUÑA CAUSING, of legal age, whose office is located at Unit 1, No. 2368 Leon Guinto St. corner JB Roxas St., Malate, Manila, after having been sworn to in accordance with law, do hereby depose and state: 1. The instant libel complaint must be thrown out or dismissed outright for utter lack of merit; 2. First, there is no law, municipal or international, that defines jurisdictional rules on blogs or weblogs or articles that were posted on a website; 3. Second, the very nature of blogs that cannot be dictated by law or any compulsory system is the fact that it can be posted in countries outside the Philippines yet it can be read in the Philippines; 4. Third, the complainant was already a public figure when the blogs concerned here were published and that the complainant failed to discharge her duties to submit proof of actual malice; 5. Fourth, the Fair Comments Doctrine applies on the case at bar and the complainant failed to discharge her obligation to submit proof of actual malice; 6. Before the four points are discussed, let me lay down the following introduction: The Prologue The respondent here has been a passionate lover of the freedom of expression, of speech, and of the press. To him, these freedoms are sacrosanct as the Constitution treats them that no law shall abridge them. The respondent has been a journalist since 1989. He was a sportswriter at first. He rose to become a deskman of the news desk of People’s Journal Tonight, which holds the record as the biggest circulated in the Philippines in the 1990s, selling 400,000 copies a day despite the fact that it was only sold within Metro Manila being an afternoon newspaper. In 1998, he was promoted to the position of news editor no less than by the most legendary press freedom fighter of all time, Joe Burgos Jr. He left People’s Tonight in 2004 and became the managing editor of Kabayan English tabloid that was closed due to brushes with the Arroyo administration. So that it is easy to see that the blood of a journalist and opinion writer cannot be separated from him. It is in this context that the two controversial blogs involved in this case were written and published online. It is therefore not connected to his being a lawyer. To reiterate, the blog articles being referred to in this Complaint are all about freedom of expression, of speech, and of the press. And if these are about these sacred rights that are among the highest in the tiers of human rights, how else could it be a source of a cause of action for disbarment or libel if there is no act of lying on the part of a lawyer-blogger? The complainant here also filed a disbarment complaint against the respondent before the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP). READ MORE: totocausing.blogspot/2013/10/anti-napoles-brief.html
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 05:57:00 +0000
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