Sun.Star: Pineda kin calls for fairness in Pampanga reports

Sun.Star: LUBAO Mayor Dennis Pineda, son of defeated Pampanga gubernatorial candidate Lilia Pineda, has issued a call for fairness in newspaper reports blaming them for violent incidents in the province lately. "The elections have been long over. Like the rest of the electorate, our family has gone back to our quiet, private life," Mayor Pineda said. He added: "Whatever our misgivings about the election results, we have registered with the agency concerned in an exercise of our right as candidate and as citizen, in total submission to our democratic processes. Whatever be the result of this action we humbly entrust to God and to the law." He said despite their silence, or maybe because of it, his family -- primarily his father -- has become the object of malicious insinuations of malfeasance, even accusations of the most dastardly criminal acts, like text messages that insinuated the Pineda family as behind the "murderous rampage" in Mabalacat town where four barangay leaders were alleged to have been shot dead in four successive days last week. There were in fact no actual killings of barangay leaders there. Police have categorically stated that no barangay leader has been hurt or killed here. The death of a zone leader in Dau the police deemed as a crime of passion is not politically motivated. Newspaper reports of political vendetta were alluded to former gambling lord Bong Pineda in connection with the death of the barangay leader of San Juan Bautista, Guagua which in effect is already a pre-judgment of the case even as the police have yet to come out with their initial findings. "Utterly unfounded, the allusion is most unfair and a gross injustice to my father and our family," the mayor said. Death threats, in text messages again, reportedly sent to just about every barangay leader in Pampanga are being blamed on the Pineda family. "That the many who have steadfastly stood by us through the years are not spared of this terror threat definitively makes these insinuations a brazen lie," the younger Pineda said. "I take this opportunity to re-express the gratitude of the Pineda family to the hundreds of barangay leaders, councilmen and zone leaders who supported us during the campaign and who continue to support us. More than useful political wards, they make true and tested friends especially in these trying times," he added. The mayor also categorically stated as "totally devoid of factual basis" the allegations in one newspaper that "campaign funds were allotted to barangay leaders to ensure the victory of Mrs. Pineda." The report added that barangay leaders were herded in undisclosed places to make them explain where they spent the money given them and why they failed to make Mrs. Pineda win. "This is not only a flagrant disrespect to the integrity of the barangay leaders but also a gross insult to their intelligence," said Mayor Pineda. He said: "It is in this regard that I plead to the media to adhere to their tenets of fairness, accuracy and responsibility in their reports. To cite an article in their Code of Ethics, to 'scrupulously report the news, taking the utmost care neither to suppress basic facts to the story nor to distort the truth by omission or improper emphasis'." - Sun.Star