Category: senate

hopes rise for RH

it was quite close: 113 yes, 104 no, 3 abstentions.  so the NAYS may have sounded as loud as the AYES in the viva voce, therefore valid naman the anti-RH call for nominal voting.  also, the hope may have been that, with the church watching from the gallery, the undecided / ambivalent / wishywashy reps who believe in a catholic vote might be intimidated enough to vote against the bill.  which may explain the slim margin, clearly not representative of the 7 out of 10 filipinos who favor RH.

there’s talk, of course, as usual, of rewards from either the palace or the church in exchange for a yes or a no.  no one’s offered any proof, of course, and i wouldn’t even have mentioned it except that on ANC i just heard a report that the president denies he dangled pork barrel funds for the passage of the RH bill. makes you wonder what kind of rewards the church, for its part, mayhap dangles for the defeat of the RH bill.  the anti-RH catholic vote?  but that’s only 3 out of 10 filipinos at best?

which, again, makes you wonder why, over in the senate, a minority is calling the shots on the RH bill. sotto has managed to delay delay delay his final interpellation, kung kailan he promises to demand amendments that will allegedly seal all alleged windows, cracks, holes through which a pro-abortion law might allegedly steal through in some alleged future.  fortunately, senators pia and miriam are no pushovers.

samantala, the church has not conceded defeat on the RH fight, umaasa malamang na some reps will change their votes and swing the tide in their favor on third and final reading.  sana naman hindi.  sana, kabaligtaran ang maganap — NO votes going YES on third reading, alang-alang sa kababaihan.

here’s a list of the 104 NAY-sayers and 3 abstainers: kalampagin to vote YES, if s/he’s your representative!

here’s a list of the 113 AYES-who-have-it: palakpakan at iboto muli!

read, too, RH Bill Voting: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 

recto’s revenge

paano naging “intellectual property” ni ralph recto his committee report on the sin tax bill when it is something he came up with as part of his job as ways and means committee chair, and as senator, who is on the payroll of taxpayers?  property yan ng taxpayers, and the senate should be free to use it rather than waste time by starting from scratch.  in the first place he shouldn’t have resigned.  ang pikon, talo.

posted that on facebook and here’s the comment thread.

Karen Berthelsen Cardenas  hmmmm… interesting case study ito. i wouldn’t know about ‘intellectual property rights” but if the report was withdrawn then in essence it does not exist. therefore it cannot be referred to.

Stuart Santiago  hmmmmmm… “withdrawn”… tricky… i suppose this is a first. usually, kung me dissent, pinaplantsa with amendments.

Karen BC  oo nga. haven’t been following the story that closely. pero iniisip ko, kung ako gumawa ng report for a committee, and i was criticized for the report etc etc and i withdrew the report and quit the committee, i would probably say well then that report is no longer presented, is invalid, and therefore don’t use it if you felt that it was borne out of conflict of interest, it must be tainted. following the logic lang di ba?

Karen BC  kung tainted yung report, then its validity is suspect anyway, so throw it out and start again by an untainted committee

Stuart Santiago recto’s revenge

cyberlibel law will “level the playing field” ?!?

before anything else, kudos cheers mabuhays to SENATOR TG GUINGONA for voting NO to the cybercrime act, the only one who dared, cared, on grounds that the libel clause is a prior restraint on freedom of expression, a constitutionally guaranteed right.

so who voted yes to the cybercrime act despite the libel clause?

LOREN LEGARDA
FRANCIS ESCUDERO 
GREGORIO HONASAN II
AQUILINO “KOKO” PIMENTEL 
PIA CAYETANO
RAMON “BONG” REVILLA JR.
JINGGOY EJERCITO-ESTRADA
PANFILO LACSON
MANUEL “LITO” LAPID
FERDINAND “BONGBONG” MARCOS
RALPH RECTO
VICENTE SOTTO III
MANNY VILLAR

so the following abstained, it would seem:

JUAN PONCE ENRILE
JOKER ARROYO
ALAN PETER CAYETANO
EDGARDO ANGARA 
FRANKLIN DRILON
MIRIAM DEFENSOR SANTIAGO
SERGIO OSMENA III 
FRANCIS “KIKO” PANGILINAN
ANTONIO “SONNY” TRILLANES

makes you wonder about these senators.

my first thought was, the ones who said yes must be anti-RH, like sotto.  but wait, where’s enrile?  and what’s RH sponsor pia doing in that list?  ah, so, maybe these are senators who have been criticized, berated, attacked online a la sotto, they know what it’s like, or maybe they haven’t and they don’t want to be and they don’t want to know what it’s like, ever, so yes, regulate blogs, facebook, twitter, news websites.

as for those who abstained, since they didn’t have it in them to say yes, good for them, then why did they not go the whole hog and vote no a la guingona?  pogi points sana.  talo rin lang kasi, wiser to stay on sotto’s good side, the old-boys-club mentality kicking in, kapit-bisig kumbaga, circle the wagons, there’s more at stake than one senator’s reputation?  there’s more at stake than one senate bill?

say ni pia cayetano sa twitter:

My review of the cybercrime bill was focused on child pornography, which falls within my area of responsibility.

a follower asked:

@piacayetano so if you say your review is only on child pornography, then all the other areas of the law you don’t bother to check? 

no response so far.  what kind of senators are these.

and no word from the palace, no explanations.  only this announcement on the president’s website, that the doj, the dilg, and the dost are working on the implementing rules and regulations of the cybercrime act.

Punishable acts under the new law include offenses against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data system, illegal access, illegal interception, data interference, system interference, and misuse of devices. Also included are computer-related offenses such as forgery, fraud, and identity theft that are rampant in the Internet.

Also punishable under the new law are content-related offenses like cybersex, and child pornography.

The law also punishes unsolicited commercial communications or cyber squatting, the acquisition of a person’s domain name for profit or destroy reputations.

ang lupit, di ba?  no time-frame, manginig tayo.  at ang weird, ni hindi nakalista ang libel.  which means what?  did they even read it?  did they even know that it contained a libel clause?

and take note, the prez and the senators are leaving it to sotto iii to defend the libel clause.  every one else is silent on the matter, esp the palace communications peeps, two of whom used to be “noted” bloggers, one of whom tweeted non-stop in memory of the declaration of martial law.

rubbing salt into the wound, sotto iii has the temerity to ask : why, what’s wrong with a libel law in cyber space? 

“I can’t see the logic,” said Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III when asked to react to media protests regarding the dangers and possible unconstitutionality of extending libel laws to new social media in the new Cybercrime Prevention Act.

“If mainstream media are prevented by law from cursing and engaging in character assassination, why should those in the social media and in the Internet be exempted from such accountability,” said Sotto, who had proposed the extension of the Act’s coverage to include libel.

“What’s so special about (mainstream journalists) that they have those prohibitions, and that they (social media bloggers) don’t?” Sotto had insisted in a recent interview.

—

The libel clause in the recently passed anti-cybercrime law is meant to “level the playing field” between the mainstream media and the social media, Sen. Vicente Sotto III said. 

he can’t see the logic in the cybercommunity’s protests.  he’s saying that he only seeks to level the playing field between social media and mainstream media, both should be covered by the same libel law, never mind that honasan had filed a bill to decriminalize libel, i guess because honasan must have changed his mind, as he voted for the cybercrime-with-libel law.

but but but it is not the playing field between mainstream and social media that’s the problem – we are co-existing, mainstream media is not complaining that social media is more free; social media, indie political bloggers in particular, are not complaining that mainstream media is profit-oriented, a capitalist enterprise.  it is what it is.  instead, mainstream and social media are feeding off each other, and that is good, for the information of the nation.

in truth, the playing field that needs to be levelled is the one between government officials and the citizens and communities whom they are pledged to serve.  lamang na lamang, llamadong llamado ang ruling class, from one admin to the next, life does not get better, only worse, for the larger population, status quo.

for our part, all that we political bloggers and commenters and tweeters and facebookers have is the internet where, as ordinary citizens mostly, we have the freedom to speak out, share our points of view, take a stand, esp on political developments that impact negatively on nation (and there are many, it doesn’t stop…), if only for the record.

indeed, it is not a level playing field, and an anti-libel law that infringes on the freedom of speech of the cyber community makes the rules even more  favorable for the already powerful ones who have sat on the RH and FOI bills, and who knows what else, divorce? for more than a decade now, manigas tayo.

on facebook there are some who say that we who are so upset by the cybercrime act should have spoken up before the bill became law, that we should have monitored closely the legislative process. ang say ko naman, but, really, there were some who spoke up, and even if more had spoken up earlier, would the senate have listened to us?  the senate has not been listening to 7 out of 10 filipinos who want the RH bill, why would they listen to the cybercommunity, na 3 out of 10 filipinos lang daw (and of that three, i bet only one is interested in politics).

ang problema sa ating elected government officials ay, they believe their own propaganda that they are god’s gift to filipinos, they know better than we do about what’s good for the nation, so na-o-offend sila na bonggang bongga when they’re called out, criticized, cyberstoned for something we think they did wrong or didn’t do right.

what if, sumagot sila nang maayos?  umamin, kapag nagkamali.  magpaliwanag, kung may malabo.  engage with the citizenry in constructive discourse.  but no.  instead of getting their acts together, instead of behaving like honorable statesmen who deserve to be in public office, instead of giving us no cause to criticize and deplore, instead of being men and facing up to public opinion for the good of nation, they slap us with an anti-cyber-libel law.

and this, from sotto pa rin, part of his justification for the libel rider, based on the senate journal of january 24, 2012.

…there are numerous abuses in technology, particularly the video and photo uploading and unnecessary write-ups and comments in social networking systems. 

unnecessary in what sense?  who is to decide about necessity?  what might seem unnecessary to sotto would not necessarily be unnecessary in the filipino’s long-term struggle for a true, informed, and working democracy.  everything being done and being said in the freewheeling ether of cyberspace today, day after day, from the inane to the cruel, from the gross to the sublime, and everything that government does and does not do, documented for cyber-eternity, has historical value and significance for the future.

i’m a writer of history, and this is an indie non-profit blog where i share historical and political notes, and call a spade a spade, in aid of nation-building, if not for my children’s generation, then for their my grandchildren’s, and yours.  don’t tell me i have to mince my words now and live in fear of sotto and his ilk.

AMEND THE ANTI-CBYERCRIME ACT!
DECRIMINALIZE LIBEL!

Amend the Anti-Cybercrime law

Editorial, The Manila Times

The Anti-Cybercrime Law may have been crafted with the best of intentions, but the final version of the bill poses nothing less than a most serious threat to our freedom of speech.

The full name of the law is the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. What it does is expand the coverage of libel.

The biggest mistake committed by the law’s authors was the last-minute insertion of a libel clause, which was not in the original version. That version received widespread support from concerned sectors who recognized that cybercrime is a growing phenomenon that must be arrested. But no one ever thought that the authors of the bill would go as far as to include online libel to the coverage of the law.

It should not be lost on anyone that the Philippines is one of the few countries in the world where libel is considered a criminal offense, and not the civil offense that it should be.

It is incredible that in a country that prides itself as having one of the freest presses in the world, anyone can still be imprisoned for writing his or her thoughts. While no one can disagree that to intentionally ruin another person’s reputation is libelous, the punishment should be commensurate to the gravity of the crime.

For the longest time, local media has been asking, begging, cajoling and demanding that Congress rewrite the country’s libel laws, and many a senator and congressman have said that they would do what was necessary. Instead, the situation has been worsened for media practitioners who are active in cyberspace via their blogs.

It is not just media that is under constant threat by the country’s archaic libel laws. Ordinary citizens who write their opinion in any media are also subject to the extreme penalties of those laws.

Look at the backlog of the country’s court cases. There is a fair percentage of one party accusing another of libel, thereby seeking to imprison that offending party. Were these cases civil suits, judgments would have been rendered quicker. Guilty parties would have to pay civil damages. Imprisoning anyone for writing any falsehood would hurt the guilty party where it hurts most—his or her pocket. But no one need spend so much as a minute in jail for a crime that causes no physical harm.

In Vietnam this week, three bloggers were jailed for “anti-state propaganda.” Is this what the country’s lawmakers want to happen here? If the law is not amended ASAP, that most sacred freedom of speech will be curtailed to the point that the Philippines may as well declare itself a communist or fascist state where no one is allowed to speak his or her mind.

They may deny it until hell freezes over, but the new law actually increases the legal punishments for libel. Where before the penalty for printed libel was six months and one day to four years and two months’ imprisonment under the Revised Penal Code, the new law would imprison anyone convicted of committing libel in cyberspace to six years and one day up to 12 years.

The law as it is written will have a chilling effect on the country’s growing number of bloggers who are also considered as citizen journalists. The situation will be worse than the martial law era when only “the true, the good and the beautiful” could be written about the Marcoses.

Take the anti-cybercrime law to the extreme. Imagine a young man who has just turned 18. He is now legally an adult. In a fit of anger, he blasts his neighbor in his Facebook page, calling that person all sorts of names. Under the anti-cybercrime law, he can be imprisoned and may not be released until his 30th birthday.

Ridiculous perhaps, but it’s the law.

The Supreme Court to hear challenge

Of the country’s lawmakers, it appears that only Senator Teofisto “TG” Guingona recognizes the dangers inherent in the libel clause of the anti-cybercrime law. He has therefore promised to challenge the new law before the Supreme Court.

There may still be time to take corrective measures since the bill was signed into law by President Aquino only last September 12. Its implementing laws and guidelines will be drafted by an inter-agency body within 90 days from that date.

Under a worst-case scenario where Guingona’s contesting of the law fails to bear fruit, then media can only hope that the guidelines be most specific about what constitutes online libel. Muzzling anyone from using the electronic media to speak his or her mind is the worst thing that can happen.

For the record, The Manila Times does not condone the wanton destruction of a person’s reputation through the use of print or electronic media. Anyone who spreads lies and half truths about other parties should receive reasonable punishment. But even a minute in prison is already unjust and unreasonable punishment in our book.