‘I could have prevented arrest of reporter’ -- Bunye Lira Dalangin-Fernandez INQ7.net
November 14, 2006
A DAY after a team of policemen on Monday tried to arrest Business Mirror reporter Mia Gonzalez inside the Malacañang compound, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said he could have stopped the service of the warrant had the arresting lawmen coordinated with his office.
Gonzalez, who was not at the Press Working Area of the Malacañang Press Corps, of which she is vice president for print, when the arresting officers came for her, returned to the Palace Tuesday after posting P10,000 bail before Branch 12 of the Manila Regional Trial Court on the libel suit filed against her by First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo.
Asked if she had a for the First Gentleman, Gonzalez said: “See you in court.”
At the same time, Bunye defended Mr. Arroyo's filing of libel suits against 43 journalists, saying media practitioners "just have to live with it."
"The fact is that has been made and it's there and we just have to live with it," Bunye replied when asked if President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is tolerating her husband's actions.
Pressed on this point, he answered: "As I said, we have rights under the law, these [libel] laws are currently in effect and any person who feels aggrieved by any perceived unfair attack has recourse to the law."
Bunye, however, said the President had nothing to do with the attempt to serve the warrant of arrest on Gonzalez by plainclothes policemen.
Like himself, Bunye said the President knew about the incident "after the fact."
"At that time, we did not have all the circumstances or the facts," he said when asked about his belated response to the incident.
He nevertheless stressed that the police should have coordinated with his office to avoid problems.
"I believe the authorities will be more circumspect next time they try something like this, that the problem could have been avoided if there was prior and proper coordination," he added.
Asked if the he would have allowed the serving of the warrant had the policemen coordinated with him, Bunye said: "There are ways of going about it and of course the parties must always have access to the courts and they should be served in a manner that will not inconvenience anybody without violating the order of the court."
He added that he would have negotiated with the arresting officers and stopped the serving of the warrant.
Asked if this means he would prevent any arrest being made inside the Palace, he said: "Well, not any arrest. There might be some valid [reason], for example murder or [a] more serious offense."
Asked about his position on libel, Bunye said: "I believe there are laws, we have existing laws; these should be respected but the manner of implementing the laws could be done in a way that would not result in too much inconvenience."
Gonzalez is one of 43 journalists facing criminal libel suits filed by the First Gentleman. The case against her stems from an article she wrote for Newsbreak magazine in 2004.
The attempt to arrest Gonzalez came a day after another journalist sued by Mr. Arroyo, columnist Ellen Tordesillas of Malaya (Free), received an e-mail threatening her with death for her criticism of the President.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and other media groups have called for the decriminalization of libel and decried both the attempt to arrest Gonzalez and the threat on Tordesillas.
