Blogger says Sen. Pia Cayetano also plagiarized speeches

After the public outrage over Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III's alleged plagiarized speech, a blogger is now alleging that Reproductive Health (RH) bill sponsor Sen. Pia Cayetano is actually guilty of the same offense.

 

In a blogpost on the website called Pinoy Templars on Sunday, an author named Elisa Sangalang said that at least two of Cayetano's privilege speeches "contained paragraphs apparently lifted from sources available online with no attribution whatsoever, a crime, people have lately described as plagiarism."

 

In an anti-Reproductive Health (RH) bill blog, the Pinoy Templars was described as a "brand-new Filipino Catholic apologetics blog."

 

But in tweets via her official Twitter account on Monday, Cayetano said she knows that a person's literary work is protected by the Intellectural Property Code.

 

"I respect that and practice attributions in my Senate speeches since I often quote UN and other sources.  Even in my personal work, I habitually attribute my sources. If at any time, I fail to attribute, I immediately make the necessary corrections and amends," she said.

 

According to her Cayetano's office, the senator is currently out of the country.

 

Plagiarized paragraphs?

 

On her blog, Sangalang said the following paragraphs from Cayetano's privilege speech delivered last Feb. 23, 2011 on “The Status of the Philippines in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals” were supposedly copied off from another source:

 

"Most mothers prefer to give birth at home with the assistance of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs). This becomes a problem since where mothers and newborns are distanced from life-saving interventions provided in health facilities by health professionals during intrapartum period, maternal and neonatal deaths are high."

 

"Mothers do not routinely choose to deliver in health facilities and avail of professional services due to several barriers such as (1) hostile hospital system, (2) poor interpersonal skills of staff, and (3) financial, physical, social and cultural constraints."

 

Both paragraphs were allegedly lifted from Health Undersecretary Mario Villaverde's presentation made before the 7th National Health Sector Meeting in April 2008 entitled “Accelerating a Unified Strategy to Save Mothers, Newborns and Children."

 

Cayetano also supposedly lifted a paragraph from the website of the United Nations Environment Programme for her privilege speech on the World Environment Day last June 6 which says:

 

"Practically speaking, a green economy is one whose growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services."

 

A check with the Senate journal indicated that there was no attribution for the said paragraph to the UN during her speech.

 

On Sunday, Sangalang also said that initially there were no footnotes on the mentioned paragraphs but that after her blogpost came out, footnotes "mysteriously appeared" on the two speeches posted on her website. — RSJ, GMA News