Press Release
June 5, 2009

THERE IS NO SINISTER AGENDA BEHIND RIGHT TO REPLY - PIMENTEL

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today dispelled the speculation that the move in Congress to enact a right to reply legislation has something to do with the 2010 elections.

Pimentel said candidates for public office are already guaranteed the right to reply under the existing Fair Election Law. He said this law requires the media to give equal time and space for competing politicians.

He said that if candidates are entitled to the right to reply, there is no reason not to extend this right to ordinary citizens which they can exercise whether it is election time or not.

Pimentel said media practitioners who are opposing the right to reply bill are raising unfounded fears by claiming that it will impair the freedoms of the press and of expression.

"I am really surprised because that requirement of equal time and equal space is already prescribed in the Fair Election Law. And nobody in the media raised a fuss about it when it was being debated in Congress," he said.

"And now that we are broadening that right to include ordinary citizens, not only candidates in a political forum during the election period, there is a lot of resistance from the media."

Pimentel said without the mandatory right to reply, ordinary citizens who are maligned by derogatory media stories but who are not accorded their chance to present their side, have no other recourse but to sue for libel which is very expensive.

He disputed the criticism that the right to reply is a throwback to the authoritarian past, pointing out that despots and dictators in fact frown on such right which is anchored on democratic principle.

"It is not a throwback at all. Even the more modern democracies of the world, especially in Europe, allow the right of reply," the opposition stalwart pointed out. "There is no right in a democracy that is unlimited," he added.

Pimentel also debunked the criticism that the right of reply will lessen the space for media stories because the response of aggrieved parties will eat up too much newspaper space or air time.

He explained that the bill actually gives newspaper and broadcast editors enough flexibility to accommodate the reply of complainants by subjecting it to "reasonable limitation."

Pimentel said he believes that the House of Representatives is committed to approve the right of reply bill. He said if the House was not able to do so on the last day of session before the sine die adjournment on June 3, it was because it was sidelined by the deliberations on the House resolution on Charter Change.

"But we are not going to lose sleep over that," he said. Pimentel added that if the bill is finally approved by Congress he does not think that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will veto it. But if she does, he said it would be to placate the media and not because that bill is not good for the nation.

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