Editorials

Tito Sotto III, Senate Majority Leader, filed a bill seeking to abolish the libel provision in the controversial Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 or RA 10175.

Sotto filed the measure to level the playing field among the internet users and mainstream media where the latter was only criminally liable under the Revised Penal Code (RPC).

Tito Sotto filed a bill last Friday to remove libel from the Cybercrime law. However, this Monday the senator opted to withdraw the bill when he heard the statement of President Benigno Aquino III on the said provision.

“I withdrew it, alam mo kung bakit, kasi gusto rin ni Noynoy (President Aquino) ang libel kaya winidraw ko, hintayin ko muna ang desisyon ng Supreme Court,” Sotto explained.

“The President is not against it, why will I go against it,” he argued.

Sotto said he cannot go against the position of the President that is why he withdrew the proposed measure.

‘Hindi decriminalizing, abolishing the libel, winidraw ko kaninang umaga. Pinapantay ko lang, nile-level ko lang sila sa inyo ang online media. Kayo meron responsibilidad. Kung ayaw nila at pag sinabi ng Supreme Court hindi dapat, di kayo rin hindi dapat,” he added.

Source: InterAksyon news

Tito Sotto became infamous due to multiple plagiarized speeches he used during the heated debate on the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. His most recent statements denying that he authored the insertion of online libel also made him on the headline news.

The senator made a farewell to copy-paste (plagiarizing speeches) but now he welcomes redo-undo (filed a bill and later withdrew it). (To those readers who don't understand the computer lingo redo & undo read the footnote.)

According to wikipedia:

A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer.

Let me rephase it.

A puppet is a person who holds a government seat and being manipulated by another person.

Let me make myself clear, I am not telling you that Tito Sotto is a puppet in the Philippine government. I am just trying to tweak the definition of wikipedia to make it more appropriate and align it to the topic that we are talking about.

To make a valid claim that Tito Sotto is a puppet, we need to have a concrete proof (which we don't have yet) that someone was indeed manipulating him or another individual stopped him from pursuing the bill he filed last week which aims to abolish online libel provision in Republic Act 10175 instead of simply decriminalizing libel.

Do I make sense? It looks like I am just fooling myself too. But anyways, my countrymen, I hope you get my point.

The quoted statements of the senator published by InterAksyon news is a strong evidence why the Philippines is always left behind.

Filipinos, when will be the time that all of us will become mature?

Things will remain the same if we will not be careful in choosing the right candicate in this incoming elections.

*Undo - to revert back or step backward. It erases the last change done to the document reverting it to an older state.

*Redo - opposite of undo. The redo command reverses the undo or advances the buffer to a more current state.