Category: freedom of information

pepsi paloma and the senate president

The Internet is like quicksand. The more aggressively you fight to remove yourself from it, the deeper you’re going to sink down into it.
— John Oliver 

… Essentially, what John means is that asking news companies and tech companies to remove articles about yourself makes you more famous for not only those articles which you want to be removed but also for the fact that you want to have them removed. In this case, Sotto wanted to remove articles about his involvement in the rape of Pepsi Paloma but, in doing so, he launched more articles into the Internet.

so, what was tito sotto thinking when he recently asked inquirer.net to take down articles on the pepsi paloma rape case?

I am writing in relation to my earlier request to remove from your news website all the published articles implicating me in the alleged rape of Pepsi Paloma, particularly on the withdrawal of her case, that happened several decades ago. I believe there was malicious imputation of a crime against me.

apparently the request was first made sometime 2016…

Sotto said he has been asking the Inquirer to remove the article for over two years.

he was running for another term in the senate when in march he spoke up, finally, about the pepsi paloma case in a teleradyo interview.

“Hindi totoo ‘yan. Gimik yan ni Rey dela Cruz. (That wasn’t true. That was the gimmick of Rey dela Cruz.),” Sotto said

… Sotto, though he wasn’t involved in the alleged rape, was dragged into the controversy when he allegedly used his position in government to influence the court’s decision.

“It [alleged rape] happened in 1982. Eh 1988 ako naging Vice Mayor,” he told anchor Alvin Elchico on DZMM Teleradyo.

Sotto served as Vice Mayor of Quezon City before he was elected senator in 1992.

“In fact, Vic and Joey filed libel case against Rey dela Cruz. And there were reports in newspapers that time quoting Paloma and she said it’s not true,” Sotto said in Filipino.

“Kaya yang mga kumakalat sa Facebook, hindi totoo yan. Paninira lang mga yan. (Those [articles] circulating on Facebook, they’re false. They’re meant to malign me),” he added.

gimmick lang ng manager?  all just paninira?

he was re-elected, of course — eat bulaga! is a golden goose that lays golden eggs that the sotto brothers and joey de leon share generously with a gratefully adoring constituency who deliver the votes everytime: patronage politics, showbiz style.  two years later he sits as senate president, third highest post in the land, and he has asked inquirer, again, to take down the 3 articles.

To be specific, the following are the write-ups — with their corresponding publishing dates — I wish your company would delete:

The Rape of Pepsi Paloma by Rodel Rodis — March 05, 2014
Was Pepsi Paloma Murdered? By Rodel Rudis — March 15, 2014
Tito Sotto Denies Whitewashing Pepsi Paloma Rape Case by Totel V. de Jesus — March 03, 2016

These kinds of unverified articles have been negatively affecting my reputation for the longest time.  My efforts to clarify my side were somewhat ineffectual by reason of the afore-cited articles were shared by your readers to the social media, and those readers who knew nothing about the issue took them as version of truth considering that those reports came from a well-trusted company like Inquirer.net.

we might not even have heard about it — inquirer didn’t tell us the first time the request was made in 2016 — had not inquirer sent rodel rodis a copy of the senate prez’s may 29 letter that rodis posted on his facebook wall 15 june.

Sotto confirmed to Politiko that he has asked that the stories be removed because they were “libelous.”

“That issue was a rey dela cruz gimmick for soft drink beauties in 1982. I was not even involved. In fact i was not a public official then as alleged by the stories,” Sotto told Politiko in a text message.

june 19, rizal day, sotto sounded confident that inquirer would submit to his request and remove the articles.

That is the original fake news, so do not make a big deal out of it,” Sotto told reporters at the Senate on Monday.

Asked if he would file libel charges if Inquirer.net failed to remove the articles, he replied: “They will.”

Pressed to confirm if he meant the Inquirer would take down the stories, he reiterated that these were “fake news, it’s original fake news.”

so.  it would seem that the senate prez is denying all of it — no rape by vic joey and richie happened sometime july 1982, therefore there was nothing for him to make areglo, and he had nothing to do with pepsi’s death by hanging (some say by strangulation) 3 years after the rape that didn’t happen.  and he expects that inquirer will take down the articles just because he says it’s all fake news.

so.  we imagined it all?  including the public apology reported by the people’s journal on october 13?  but but but i have a “TV Junkie” column to show for it, published in Parade magazine (edited by fred marquez) soon after the apology:

Now that Pepsi has forgiven Vic, Joey, and Richie, it’s back to show business as usual for the three musketeers. How nice.

When the news of the rape case first broke… I expressed incredulity. I couldn’t believe that Vic and Joey were insane enough to jeopardize their careers for a momentary macho thrill.

On second thought I realized that Pepsi couldn’t have completely contrived the situation. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Obviously, at some point in time, Vic & Co. got together with Pepsi & Co. Who set the meeting up and what occurred, we don’t know. Among other things, Pepsi & Co. claimed it was rape; Vic & Co. claimed it was a photo session.

I tried to follow the case closely but the major dailies treated it like backpage news. I had to be content with the skimpy reportage of afternoon tabloids.

There was mention of a missing Sulo waiter, a crucial witness, but no follow through. I wondered where he might be, what his story might be, and why we didn’t have snoopy reporters a la Lois Lane ferreting him out of hiding.

All through August and September the Sotto camp issued nothing but denials. Vic even had an alibi: he and brother Tito were at their mother’s house in Ermita at the time of the alleged rape.

And then the bomb. A letter of apology. An admission of guilt. Implicit. Unmistakable. “Dear Pepsi . . . We hope that you will not allow the error we have committed against you to stand as a stumbling block to that future which we all look forward to. We therefore ask you to find it in your heart to pardon us for the wrong which we have done against you. Sincerely…” (People’s Journal 13 October)

i even remember eat bulaga‘s post-apology special that was held in araneta coliseum.  it was supposed to be a test.  kung mapupuno nila ang coliseum, ibig sabihin ay napatawad sila ng madlang pipol.  and fill the big dome to the rafters they did.  the high point of the show was dina bonnevie’s surprise appearance, complete with a smack for hubby vic, to show the world that she too had forgiven him.  at least that’s the message i got.  

we didn’t really know much more about the rape case until 2004 when FPJ ran for president and hired tito sotto as campaign manager.  fundy soriano of People’s Tonight wrote in his “Talk Show” column:

HINDI nagkamali ang aktor na kandidatong pangulo na si FPJ sa pagkuha sa komedyanteng naging senador na si Tito Sotto bilang campaign manager dahil sanay na ito sa pag-areglo ng gusot na kinasangkutan ng mga taong malalapit sa kanya.

Hindi talaga nagkamali si Poe sa pagkuha kay Sotto dahil hasang-hasa na sa pagtatanggol at pagtutuwid ng mga sitwasyong baluktot.

Unang nasubukan ang galing ni Sotto noong Oct. 1982 nang pangunahan niya ang pag-areglo sa kasong rape na isinampa ng sexy stars na sina Pepsi Paloma at Guada Guarin laban sa kanyang kapatid na si Vic Sotto at mga kasamang sina Joey de Leon at Richie D’Horsie. Sa record ng kaso, nabulgar ang rape case nang lapitan ng ina ni Pepsi Paloma si Atty Rene Cayetano (ama ng senatorial candidate na si Pia Cayetano) para hingan ng tulong para makamtan ng kanyang anak ang katarungan na umanoy minolestiya ng tatlong host ng Eat Bulaga.

Nang nabatid na ikinakasa na ng naging senador na si Cayetano ang kaso sa piskalya ng QC, biglang naglaho ang tin-edyer na starlet na hindi nagtagal ay nabawi ng mga tauhan nina Col. Rolando Abadilla at Capt. Panfilo Lacson (yes, si Ping na kandidatong pangulo) ng MISG sa kamay ng kilalang hoodlum na si Ben Ulo. Umalingasaw ang pangalan ng mga Sotto nang aminin ni Ben Ulo na tauhan siya ng mga Castelo, maternal clan nina Tito at Vic.

Ayon kay Pepsi Paloma, umano’y mismong si Tito Sotto ang pumilit sa kanya na pirmahan ang affidavit of desistance para hindi matuloy ang kasong may parusang bitay. Tuluyang napigil ang pag-inog ng katarungan nang nagpakumbaba ang mga komedyante at naglabas ng public apology sa husgado kung saan inamin din ng mga ito ang nagawang krimen sa starlet na nagbigti ilang taon ang nakalipas dahil sa umano’y hindi pa rin nakalimutan ang kahalayang ginawa sa kanya ng mga artistang kabilang ngayon sa likod ng kandidatura ni Poe.  (May 8, 2004)

i found the above in an online exchange forum on the pepsi paloma rape case, posted by commenter no. 9.  i quoted it in enrile, sotto, pepsi #RH at the height of the RH debates in 2011.  the site has since been taken down, alas.  buti na lang na-copy-n-paste ko.  [it is also cited in former senator heherson alvarez’s blog]

i wonder if the senate prez really thinks he can erase all texts and images re the 1982 rape of pepsi paloma by the accused vic sotto joey de leon and richie d’horsie, as well as all the stories about how big brother tito, now the senate prez, made it all go away, how galing.  and he wasn’t even a vice-mayor, much less a senator, yet!

but rodis is right:

Rodel Rodis
16 June at 01:35 · The Inquirer.net announced that it has not yet made a decision on whether to accede to Senate President Sotto’s “request” to remove my March 2014 articles implicating him in the 1982 rape of then 14 year old Filipino American actress Pepsi Paloma and in her subsequent murder two years later. Stay tuned. If Sotto succeeds, then Jinggoy Estrada, Bongbong Marcos, Duterte and even China will make similar demands that my critical articles about them should also be removed from the Inquirer website.

ito naman ang sey ni fr. eliseo “jun” mercado on his facebook wall:

I, too, wonder what the Pepsi Paloma and Tito Sotto issue was all about. Unresolved rape case?

thanks to the revisionist attempts of the senate president himself, the pepsi paloma rape case has finally become a cause célèbre.  it even trended on twitter, LOL, and the senate should be concerned about its steadily deteriorating image.  i would think this calls for a senate investigation, no kidding.  some of the personalities mentioned, said to have known about the case, are still alive.  juan ponce enrile.  panfilo lacson.  guada guarin.  fundy soriano?

googled guada guarin and found this on pinoyparazzi.com by RK Villacorta who chanced upon her in late 2015:

Masama ang loob ni Guada sa ilang mga taga-media na inungkat pa ang na isinampa nila na kaso noon ni Pepsi almost 35 years ago. “Tapos na yun, nag-public apology na sila sa amin,” kuwento ni Guada na ngayon ay isang spa manager.

too bad cayetano and abadilla are no longer with us.  but i sure would like to hear from JPE and ping lacson.  just to see whose side they’re on.

Freedom of anti-information

Katrina S.S.

LESS than two months since we elected a new President, there is no day that I do not reel from the change that has come, for good, better, worse—depending on where you stand on issues.

Read on…

SONAkakaiyak

i was hoping it would be different.  i was hoping that the informed public’s displeasure over DAP had shaken him up enough to eschew the bragging (about small change) and the sniping, the snarking, at critics (left right and center).

i was also hoping to be suprised, praying that the continuing and increasing poverty, joblessness, high prices, environmental decay atbp. all of four years into his watch would have shaken him up enough to see that any talk of transformation is just that, just talk, and so finally he would level up, find the mind and the heart, the nerve, the guts, the balls, to walk the talk, even run with it, take the leap, and we would all rally behind him, the middleclass and the majority poor, towards a new equitable socio-economic order.  ika nga ni alex magno, who for once wasn’t comparing the president with his former boss GMA:

Aquino had immense political capital at the onset. He could have deployed this capital to break new ground, alter our policy architecture to wean it away from oligarchic capture. 

that would have been awesome.  i mean, you know, talk about inclusive growth and transformation…

alas, the 5th sona was no different from the first four: self-congratulatory, proud of small pockets of achievement, and other small changes lined up, at least one for every sector it would seem, but apparently unmindful of the big picture and of long-festering issues and crises in all sectors, almost as though not acknowledging these would make them go away, like magic.

but, ok, pasalamat na lang that he didn’t rant anew at the supreme court, and that disimulado ang pag-push niya pa rin sa DAP.  also it was a relief that unlike sonny coloma and some yellowyalists, the president did not claim credit for the arrests of enrile, estradajr and revillajr, maybe because the question still is, why oppositionists only…

i was waiting for him to iterate the FOI promise, but he didn’t.  lacierda says it’s because the prez had already promised its passage (before the end of his term) in that daylight dialogue with the world bank, sabay:

Besides, the government is already giving the public access to data through Open Data initiative, Lacierda added. 

tila pangakong napako nang tunay.  maybe congress could would only promise the supplementary budget he’s requesting, and passage of the 2015 budget of course? maybe FOI in 2016 pa pala, just before he steps down?  or maybe never, in case it’s his annointed who wins in 2016?  that open data ek is surely nothing like FOI or they’d be calling it FOI, kahit pa watered-down na, ‘no?

as for that emotional all-choked-up the filipino-is-worth-dyinglivingfighting-for moment, it was an obvious tug at heartstrings, premised as it was on a notion of supreme sacrifice.

To my Bosses: You gave me an opportunity to lead our efforts to transform society. If I had said “no” when you asked me to take on this challenge, then I could just as well have said that I would help prolong your suffering. I cannot do that in good conscience. If I had turned my back on the opportunity, then I might as well have turned my back on my father and mother, and all the sacrifices they made for all of us; that will not happen. On our journey along the straight path, you have always chosen what is right and just; you have been true to your promise, and I have been true to all of you. [Applause] 

back in 2010 when conrado de quiros, alex magno, and bongbong marcos (among other strange bedfellows) were urging, nay, challenging, him to run for president, i blogged: not yet, noynoy.  i thought it would be wise to run as mar roxas’s vice-president muna, learn the ropes, while reading the writings his father left behind, products of much thought, products of a brilliant nationalist mind.

given your parents, the history, the genes, the values, you, more than any other filipino, can do it, can be it. but not without serious preparation for the role, which would mean learning not just from your mother’s successes but also from her mistakes — e.g., (in) land reform, foreign debts, atbp. — and, most importantly, by being truly your father’s son not just in terms of his sacrifice but also of his political ideology.

when your father came home in ‘83 he had a program of action that he drafted while in exile in boston. surely that program of action is worth looking into — other than the dismantling of military rule, things haven’t changed much, except gotten worse, since the 80s — and hopefully, you will be up to the revolutionary challenges it poses.

forget de quiros and other hopeless romantics who urge you to run in 2010. to do so, and to fail at non-violent revolution because you are not ready, would be the end of you. in effect, you’d be neutralized, which would be a shame.

SONAkakaiyak.

Freedom of Information is not just about media

By Benjamin Pimentel

SAN FRANCISCO — President Benigno Aquino III has said he supports the Freedom of Information bill, which just took a small step forward this week with the approval of the House committee on public information.

But it’s clear that Aquino also has reservations about the FOI bill, and these concerns appear to be based on a misconception: He thinks Freedom of Information is all about media.

This was evident in some of his remarks focused on how FOI could help journalists.

In a speech last year, he said, “This right to know carries with it responsibilities – to use the information available in context; to present facts fairly; and to be conscious of some elements who may want to use the information not to inform the public, but to, rather, inflame them, ”Giving media more access to information, he continued, “does not mean that we want media to be lapdogs of government; at the same time, media shouldn’t allow themselves to be used as attack dogs either.”

More recently, Aquino even endorsed the controversial “right of reply” provision, which could essentially serve to intimidate and hamper media and give people in power even more power to suppress critics.

As he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, “If two sides of a story are reported, if the details of every news are accurate and the freedom of all Filipinos to form their own opinion is valued, then any journalist has nothing to worry about, isn’t it?”

Many of my Philippine media friends and colleagues will no doubt have a problem with that statement since most them believe in covering not just two, but many sides of every story.

It’s also hard to argue with some of the issues the president has raised in connection with the state of the Philippine media, including corruption and fairness. Many Filipino journalists I know share those concerns.

But the more important point is this: Freedom of Information is not just about journalists and journalism.

It says so at the beginning of the bill authored by Rep. Erin Tañada: “The State recognizes the right of the people to information on matters of public concern.” It does not say “the right of the media.”

Representative Tañada reiterated this to me during his recent visit to California, saying that point “is much misunderstood.”

The bill “is more of a citizen’s right to freedom of information and not the media,” he told me in an email shortly before flying back to Manila to make another attempt to save the bill.

“The constitutional provision on the Right to Information did not mention it as a media right but a citizen’s right,” he added.

The Philippines must define its own path on this issue.

But the country can learn a lot from the American experience when it comes to Freedom of Information. The US law, which was passed in 1966, is called the Freedom of Information Act, or the FOIA.

It’s even become a verb, ‘Foya.’

US journalists would typically say, ‘I’m going to Foya that document,” or ‘We can Foya the emails, letters and other communications on this subject.’ To be sure, the law has helped many newspapers and other media organizations in reporting on government.

But in fact, any person, including US citizens, foreign nationals, organizations, universities, businesses and state and local governments, can file a FOIA request.

The respected National Security Archives has a comprehensive list of FOIA successes, involving both media and non-media groups, on its website.

A few examples:

In April 2004, the Natural Resources Defense Council, using internal documents obtained through the FOIA, found out that while the Environmental Protection Agency had concluded that some kinds of rat poison posed a risk to children, the rat poison makers were given broad access to make changes in documents describing the risks.

In December 2005, the Migration Policy Institute of New York University Law School used data obtained through a FOIA to show that thousands of people accused by the Dept. of Homeland Security of being immigration violators were innocent.

In 2005, the Associated Press used FOIA documents to show that many small businesses who received government loans meant to help out those who were affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks didn’t need the help.

The AP studied documents on how $5 billion in loans were designated, and found that some of the money went to a South Dakota country radio station, a dog boutique in Utah and some Dunkin’ Donuts and Subway franchises that didn’t even know they were getting terrorism-recover related loans.

In a few cases, individuals were able to use the Freedom of Information Act to uncover important information.

In 2001, a historian at the National Security Archive reported that U.S. intelligence officers “deliberately skewed” evidence to make it appear that North Vietnamese ships attacked US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. False reporting on the incident eventually led to the escalation of the Vietnam War.

In 2006, an independent transportation consultant, curious about New York’s taxi accident rates, found out, with the help of FOIA data, that passengers in New York taxis are twice as likely to be hurt in accidents as passengers in private cars because taxi riders usually don’t wear seat belts and can be injured by cab partitions.

Another point needs to be highlighted: Freedom of Information is not just about scandals and exposing secrets of people in power. It can also be about helping government and policy makers uncover problems.

That’s what happened in 2005 when the Richmond Times-Dispatch, using FOIA documents to review disciplinary reports and concluded that up to 75 percent of the cells in the Richmond City jail may have broken locks.

The paper looked into the problem after an escaped inmate killed another prisoner. As a result of the report, authorities found out that there was indeed a problem. They hired a locksmith to fix the broken locks.

A Freedom of Information law will not magically fix all problems in government. But it can help expand and strengthen Philippine democracy,

Yes, it can certainly help journalists do their jobs. But it’s much more than that.