Thursday, February 21, 2008 Espinoza: Triumph for Cebu media By Elias L. Espinoza Free Zone
REMEDIES are still available even if one loses a criminal complaint filed with the prosecutor’s office. The aggrieved party can file a motion for reconsideration. If the result is still unfavorable, an appeal or petition for review with the justice secretary can be filed.
A prosecutor’s resolution cannot be reconsidered if one does something like what Capitol consultant Byron Garcia did last Friday at the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor. Byron must have thought that just because he is consultant of his sister, Gov. Gwen Garcia, he can also impose his will on occupants of the Palace of Justice.
Prosecutors, in conducting preliminary investigations, are bound by rules of evidence that Byron’s lawyer presumably knows. And the presumption of regularity in the performance of duty always favors the prosecutor.
Since the criminal complaint Byron filed against lawyer Rex Fernandez was done through his legal counsel, he should have referred the matter to the said counsel instead of storming the office of City Prosecutor Nicolas Sellon, who was not even inside.
What Byron did was akin to the rumored “Oplan Pakilala” practice of police officers. While Byron is his own man, what he did does not speak well of his father, Rep. Pabling Garcia, who can stay cool even in intense political squabble.
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Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara’s withdrawal of the right-to-reply bill he authored in the House is a victory not only for Cebu media but also for the country. Angara understood the position of Cebu media on the bill and has seen the impracticality of enforcing it once it becomes a law.
The Cebu Media Lawyers and the Cebu Citizens-Press Council consider the bill as unconstitutional because it violated the constitutional guarantee of a free press and amounts to a prior restraint.
I hope Sen. Nene Pimentel, proponent of Senate Bill 1178, and Rep. Monico Puentevella, who filed House Bill 1001, which is of similar nature as Angara’s bill, will also see the light.
Puentevella and Pimentel’s unsavory experience with some members of the press cannot be used as basis for passing a law that contravenes the core of society’s unfettered right to receive information.
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While any help is welcome, Citom traffic enforcers assisting their counterparts in Mandaue City only shows the sorry state of Mandaue’s traffic management.
I helped create Mandaue’s traffic body in the previous administration and assisted in the strict enforcement of traffic ordinances, rules and regulations. It thus pains me to see the poor state of the city’s traffic today.
Busy city intersections are manned by inexperienced or untrained traffic people. Worse, they cannot apprehend violators because they reportedly don’t have citation tickets. This has emboldened undisciplined PUJ drivers, who ignore traffic ordinances even right in the very noses of traffic personnel.
In my watch, I set college graduate as standard qualification for traffic enforcers. Directing traffic is not as simple as others might think. It involves the lives, limbs and properties of motorists and pedestrians.
One day while I was on my way to Lapu-Lapu City, a Team member directing traffic at the intersection below the Maguikay flyover signaled our side to go without stopping first vehicles going the opposite way. It looked funny but was utterly dangerous.
