Sotto: Decriminalizing libel ‘not easy,’ it’s in the 10 Commandments

Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Thursday thumbed down a suggestion to decriminalize libel, pointing out that "bearing false witness" is included in the 10 Commandments of God.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., a former journalist, made the proposal to Sotto in a tweet earlier in the day.

"Let's decriminalize libel, Senate President Sotto. The money damages alone are far, far, far, far more painful," Locsin said as he reacted to a law professor's post about Rappler CEO Maria Ressa's case.

"I wish it were that easy. Grandpa was the author of the 1946 Press Freedom Law. Unfortunately, lying (libel) is found in the Ten Commandments," Sotto said in response to Locsin.

"But bankruptcy hurts more. Besides, El 10 Commandments is self-enforcing if you live in the area of its promulgation. If the transgression is awful a bolt of lightning flies out from El Finger in the clouds around the peak of Mount Sinai," the DFA chief responded in another reply.

In a message to reporters, Sotto expounded on his reservations about decriminalizing libel.

"Bearing false witness against thy neighbor is a higher law from God than any other law of man. Ten Commandments cannot be amended," he said.

"Lying in court is perjury. Lying in congressional investigations can lead to detention. Otherwise, what will happen? Even a bouncing check is a kind of lying that can mean imprisonment. Do we decriminalize all these?" he added.

The exchange of tweets on libel between Sotto and Locsin came on the heels of the guilty verdict handed down by a regional trial court on Ressa and a former Rappler researcher over an alleged libelous article linking businessman and private complainant Wilfredo Keng to human trafficking and drug smuggling.

The court sentenced them to six months and one day to up to six years in jail and were ordered to "jointly and severally" pay Keng P200,000 in moral damages and P200,000 in exemplary damages. The two were allowed to post bail.

Despite Sotto's position on the matter, Locsin ended the conversation in a friendly manner.

"Well anyway you're the best Senate President in the history of the Republic and I am old enough to tell you as an eyewitness. Especially in the crisis circumstances in which you've found yourself as Senate President. No need to say keep it up; it is what you do all the time," he said.

The Cabinet official earlier expressed that the Commission on Human Rights should not question the libel laws in the Philippines but the decision in Ressa's case instead.

"It's not libel laws; people must be protected against defamation; first duty of the state is to protect life and honor. What's wrong with the decision against Ressa is that it was wrongly decided. A typo does not revive a prescribed liability. It was libel but out of time," Locsin said.

Rappler's article in question was published in 2012, months before the anti-cybercrime law was enacted. However, prosecutors alleged that the "republished" version of the story in 2014 is covered by the said law.

The legal camp of Rappler argued that the theory of republication does not apply to online media and pointed out that the story was only updated just to correct a typographical error. — RSJ, GMA News