It has come to our attention that Manila Standard Today published in its website on December 5, 2020 a news story with the following misleading headline: “Comelec affirms bid to disqualify Gabriela for ‘supporting terror’”. The story’s lead also insinuated that the poll body had already decided in favor of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict’s (NTF-ELCAC) petition to cancel the party-list registration of Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP). The news story was written by Rio N. Araja and Macon Ramos-Araneta.
In the interest of fairness and journalistic accuracy, we respectfully insist that an immediate correction to this grave error in the headline and news story be made. We submit that a casual reading of the story without the benefit of being provided a copy or citations of key components of the subject Commission on Elections (Comelec) order tends to leave readers with the impression that the poll body has already affirmed the cancellation of GWP’s registration as a party-list. Worse, the headline used the words “supporting terror” enclosed in quotation marks, playing into the red-tagging and terror-tagging schemes of no less than the petitioner in the case, the NTF-ELCAC.
We would like, thus, to set the record straight: the Comelec registration of GWP remains valid. What the poll body’s Second Division merely said in its November 24 (not November 27 as the story erroneously noted) order was that the NTF-ELCAC supposedly has legal standing to pursue the petition to cancel our registration. Moreover, the order scheduled the hearings in January 2021 in relation to the merits of the case, precisely because Comelec has yet to rule upon the substantive issues of the NTF-ELCAC’s position. In response to the subject order, we filed a Motion for Reconsideration dated December 1, 2020 on December 2, 2020 – to which the Comelec has yet to issue a resolution.
If only we have been contacted to provide our comments on the cited developments, we could have easily pointed out these significant details and shared the basis of our position that the NTF-ELCAC has no capacity to sue for the cancellation of GWP’s registration. As such, the report unfortunately left out these details and the substance of our appeal of the subject order.
We also lament that the story left much to be desired in terms of nuance and accuracy. As mentioned, the subject order is merely dispositive of a procedural matter brought to the Comelec for resolution. Nowhere in the said order is any statement, conclusion, or insinuation that GWP is in any way “supporting terror”. To report as news that the Comelec ruled that we are supporting terrorism not just inflicts damage to our public image, but also endangers the lives of our leaders and members, especially with the Anti-Terrorism Law in effect.
We strongly insist that an erratum and apology from your newspaper be issued and published as we urge that the story in question be corrected immediately. We respectfully pose that the right to free expression, which ensures that your newspaper is able to enjoy editorial freedoms without fear of reprisal, is the very same tenet that we seek to defend as we continue to challenge the government’s apparent campaign of communist- and terrorist-tagging of critics. Thus, leaving the subject report without any correction does our common struggle to uphold freedom of expression a grave disservice. It is our hope that when authorities reduce the world by polarizing it through disinformation in order to accomplish their unjust and harmful agendas, the press rises up to challenge it by providing nuance, context, and an unflinching commitment to fairness and the accurate reporting of the truth.
Sincerely,
(Sgd)
Rep. Arlene Brosas
National President
Gabriela Women’s Party