Editorial
The libel provision in the anti-cybercrime law appears to be the crux of the outrage in the online community against the law as so-called netizens or those who extensively use the Internet for social interaction found wide support in protesting the law and calling for amendments of several of its provisions if not its complete repeal.
What is obscene is the seeming rush of legislators to regurgitate the law for obvious political motivations with a national elections next year. Everybody, including the monkey’s uncle, is riding on the supposed restrictive anti-cybercrime law for both media and political mileage.
What was appalling is that now, some of the imminent members of Congress are admitting that they were half asleep during deliberations on the bill and that the supposed champions of free expression who are now screaming murder but were in on the consultations made on the bill did not raise the same rage they show now.
Why not then? Why only now?
Clearly, the same legislators wanted this online libel law but as these senators and congressmen have come to the realization that the outrage against the cybercrime law may well ruin their chances at the Senate and the congressional districts, they are now talking amendments or trying to avoid being linked to the new law.
But evidently, Noynoy and his Malacañang aides still have not realized this, and worse, the same outrage is hurting not just the administration but Noynoy too, now that he is being called a dictator, with is e-dictatorship.
To this day, Malacañang insists that the cybercrime law is good, and will not be abused, which is a laugh, since they in Malacañang have been abusing too many laws and provisos in the Charter.
Now the move by some legislators is to seek the decriminalization of online libel which will create more distortions in the law if libel on other media is not decriminalized altogether.
Libel is restrictive per se whether online or in any other media. It is made worse by the criminal element attached to it imposing on those accused of it practically with years of court attendance.
The tediousness of the country’s judicial system is the main weapon of intimidation from being slapped with libel and accused a criminal.
There is no such thing as online libel differentiated from libel of any other form, relaxing libel online while maintaining its criminal aspect on media thus constitutes a new form of injustice.
Moves to decriminalize libel have been sitting in Congress for a long time, reflecting the fear of those in power from losing an effective tool in stymieing media.
This is the same fate the Freedom of Information (FoI) bill suffers as legislators insist on enforcing a parallel law, or the right to reply, to offset the right to information which is already provided under the Constitution.
If the legislative mill will selectively speed up for the online community while retaining the same restrictive libel measures on media then the cry for free expression would be futile.
The country should unite against criminal libel of all forms since that is the real enemy of free expression and legislators are merely paying lip service to eradicating it primarily during a campaign period.
Removing the offending provision in the anti-cybercrime law also won’t do any justice at all in upholding freedom of expression and the law may violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution which was the reason the Truth Commission was turned down by the Supreme Court in the first place since it is directed only at exposing the excesses of Gloria Arroyo.
Libel in its current form is not a problem unique to the online community, it has been the scourge of media for ages.
Decriminalize libel, pass the FoI and end all hypocritical crap.
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