Thursday, December 06, 2007 Fiscals file incourt Gwen charge v. Leo
VETERAN broadcaster Leo Lastimosa and Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia are headed for a courtroom faceoff, after the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office yesterday charged the columnist with libel before the Regional Trial Court (RTC).
Lastimosa’s bail was set at P10,000.
He told Sun.Star Cebu he will submit to the process. His lawyer, former Lapu-Lapu City prosecutor Celso Espinosa, will file a motion seeking to suspend the issuance of an arrest warrant, pending his appeal before the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Lastimosa has questioned the resolution of the prosecutor’s office indicting him for libel over some columns about the governor.
Garcia, in her complaint, said that Lastimosa has “consistently manifested contempt and ill will” against her and her family. She cited his column in The Freeman last April 14, in which Lastimosa allegedly accused the governor of being unreasonable, ill-tempered and foul-mouthed, as evidenced in the way she berated people, including media practitioners who criticized the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) project.
That column, according to Garcia, portrayed her as being “culpable or directly responsible” for the alleged anomalies in the P2-billion expenditures for the summit.
The governor has also sued Lastimosa over another column titled “Si Doling kawatan” (Doling the thief).
Garcia believes that piece was about her and that Doling was merely a play on her first name. That complaint is still pending before the prosecutor’s office, while a civil suit she filed in her hometown Barili is ongoing.
In their June 18 resolution, the panel of prosecutors headed by Assistant Prosecutor Lineth Lapinid ruled to dismiss the case.
The panel said that Lastimosa indeed issued statements that are defamatory and libelous, when he wrote that Garcia has reason to be afraid that the public clamor for an accounting of the Asean Summit expenses would directly lead to the Capitol.
Panel members said they were convinced the statements are a “veiled insinuation” that Garcia is guilty of certain offenses. However, they also clarified that there is no proof of malice on the part of Lastimosa when he wrote those statements.
Upon review, Cebu City Prosecutor Fernando Gubalane revised the recommendation of the panel and ruled for the filing of the case. While the presence of malice is required to convict, it isn’t necessary for the filing of a case.
Lastimosa is apprehensive that while the regular raffling of cases is done on Mondays, Garcia could ask for a special raffle this week.
“That means they could have me arrested even before Monday. Considering the power and influence of Governor Garcia, I cannot discount the possibility that they’ll arrest me on a Friday afternoon so I can stay in jail overnight or the whole weekend before I could exercise my constitutional right to post bail,” he said.
He added, however, that he is willing to go to jail and that he is aware of what the governor could do to make life difficult for him and his family.
“She just could not accept the fact that a poor journalist could question her actuations and expose the excesses of her administration,” he added.
Lastimosa stressed that an ordinary taxpayer like him could demand for an accounting of how government funds are spent and that public access to information, as enshrined in the 1987 Constitution and the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Government Officials and Employees, cannot be curtailed through libel suits.
He is optimistic that the courts will eventually dismiss the governor’s legal action as “whimsical, abusive and pure harassment.” (KNT)
