Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Sunday disparaged the threat of Rappler chief executive officer Maria Ressa to file suits against him and the government following her indictment and arrest last week over a cyber libel case filed by a businessman.
Guevarra said Ressa’s threat to hold the government accountable for her ordeal will not hold water, saying it will only be dismissed outright by any competent body.
“We are performing our duties to prosecute anyone who breaks the law. We are confident that her allegations will not prosper because we have not violated any law. So just go ahead and bring it on,” Guevarra said, when asked for comment on Ressa’s threat.
The Justice Secretary debunked the insinuation of Ressa that the Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation have engaged in “selective justice” and “weaponization of the law” in indicting and arresting her upon the order of a Manila City court.
“Harassment and persecution are not in my vocabulary,” Guevarra pointed out.
According to him, the filing of cyber libel case against Ressa and her arrest were not done to harass or target critics of the Duterte administration or to threaten the constitutional freedom of the press, reiterating that it is an ordinary criminal case now up to the trial court to resolve.
“Press freedom is not absolute. The rights of other citizens deserve equal protection,” he said.
The DOJ chief added that Ressa is “old enough to know what’s good for her” and should just face the case before the court without the “theatrics.”
“What the government has done is to actually forge us in fire. It made me, as the CEO and a journalist, to decide early on that we would live according to our standards and ethics, that we will hold government accountable even if it’s bad for business,” Ressa said last Friday.
Ressa was arrested last Feb.13 by NBI agents upon order issued by Manila regional trial court branch 46 over the cyber libel case filed by the DOJ upon complaint of businessman Wilfredo Keng.
She spent the night at the NBI headquarters in Manila after failure to post bail in the evening. But she was released the following day, Feb.14, after posting P100,000 bail before the court.
The DOJ found probable cause in the complaint filed by the NBI and Keng for violation of Republic Act 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act in March last year.
`Published in May 2012, the article written by Santos cited an “intelligence report,” saying Keng had been under surveillance for his alleged involvement in human trafficking and drug smuggling.
Ressa questioned her indictment, saying the article was not covered by RA 10175 that was enacted in Sept. 2012 and that the case should have been dismissed due to one-year prescription period on libel cases.
However, the DOJ stressed that the updated version of the article, which was posted by Rappler on Feb. 19, 2014, was covered by the law and that the one-year prescription period on libel cases does not apply to cyber libel case, which has 12 years of prescription period.
Guevarra also already explained that Ressa could have prevented her arrest if she wanted to because she could post bail anytime – even before the issuance of the arrest warrant by the court. He said her lawyers were certainly aware of this.