Decriminalize

Following are excerpts from a Sept 14, 2004 editorial in Today newspaper in the Philippines, written by Congressman Teodoro Locsin, Jr.

In Jakarta last week, the cream of the foreign press gathered to join in protest against the impending conviction for criminal libel of two Indonesian journalists for calling a big businessman "a scavenger" in the name of euphony and suggesting he had torched a public market for the purpose of urban renewal.

While no Filipino outside the reckless media thinks we should go easy on journalists who make a livelihood out of libels, there may be a compelling reason to take the criminal aspect out of the libel law.

True, nine times out of ten, libels are committed with malice and a reckless disregard for the truth not just here in our country but in any other democracy where the media think they can get away with it. But it is for that one time when an unduly harsh report about particularly egregious conduct is necessary that a case can be made for decriminalizing libel. Such a case is that reset for decision to September 16, involving a criminal libel against two journalists filed by a big businessman with connections to the Indonesian military and links to the dictatorial past.

It is true that civil libel alone can silence a newspaper that is in business only for the money.
But civil libel will not stop crusading journalists from staying in the attack against the abuses of people in power. They will even pay out of their own pockets for the continued publication of a beleaguered newspaper that has not a penny, a peso or rupiah to its name.

Only criminal libel can stop them -- by sending the journalists to jail, where they shall have no pen, no paper, no time to think, no chance for discovery, no freedom to say the truth and no means to get it published.

Right now, there would be no sight more heartwarming than one of our self-important media moguls, publishers, editors, hack columnists and paid reporters being led away in chains -- but only for now.

What happens when dictatorship returns? Only this: the spectacle of dictatorship suppressing dissent by no more than the means allowed by democracy to regulate expression and conduct.
It is in this consideration that moves us to change our former position and demand that Congress after all decriminalize libel along with other laws originally intended to impose someone's else's law and order and which no longer serve that purpose yet might do so again. While we can, while we are free, let us disarm the enemies of freedom of the weapons of democracy.