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MANILA, Philippines – Inquirer.net has apologized to Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo over its report that he had recommended executive clemency for rape-slay convict Antonio Sanchez.
Inquirer.net posted its public apology to Panelo on Friday, September 6, days after the Palce official threatened to file libel complaints against the news site and Rappler, which also ran the report, if they failed to issue a public apology.
“Inquirer.net apologizes for reporting on its social media platform that Secretary Salvador Panelo wrote a letter to BPP executive director Reynaldo Bayang recommending executive clemency for ex-Calauan Mayor Antonio Sanchez,” Inquirer.net said in a statement.
“Inquirer.net posted Secretary Panelo’s clarification upon receipt of his statement on the matter. The updated reports stated that he merely referred the request of Sanchez’s family to Bayang,” it added.
At the Senate hearing on the good conduct time allowance (GCTA) law and on the botched release of Sanchez on Tuesday, September 3, Bureau of Pardons and Parole chief Reynaldo Bayang revealed that Panelo wrote to him on February 26 in relation to the letter of the Sanchez family on the former mayor’s executive clemency bid.
Inquirer.net tweeted that Panelo wrote a letter “recommending” executive clemency for Sanchez while Rappler published an article entitled, “LOOK: Panelo endorsed Sanchez’s letter for executive clemency.”
Panelo said in news conference on that same day that he took exception to the use of the words “recommending” and “endorsed” in both cases. He claimed that the articles were irresponsible, malicious, and sought to discredit him and tarnish his honor.
‘No apology’
Rappler had called Panelo’s libel threat a “pure diversionary tactic” amid conflict of interest questions about his letter to the BPP, considering that he was a defense lawyer for Sanchez.
On Wednesday, September 4, Rappler received a letter of “demand for public apology and rectification” from Panelo over what he described as a “defamatory and libelous” story that Rappler published on the same day.
Rappler maintains that it need not apologize for a story that is neither libelous nor defamatory.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) had said that Panelo’s threat to sue Rappler and Inquirer.net showed that criminal libel and cyberlibel laws are “used as weapons wielded by the powerful to exact revenge and to punish than a legal remedy for justice.
Senators had questioned the propriety of Panelo’s letter to the BPP – where he used the letterhead of the Office of the President and wrote as Chief Presidential Legal Counsel – considering that he used to be a lawyer of Sanchez. President Rodrigo Duterte, however, cleared him of any wrongdoing. ([OPINION] Sal Panelo’s sleight of hand)
Panelo was among Sanchez’s defense lawyers in the 1993 rape-slay of student Eileen Sarmenta and the murder of Allan Gomez. Both were students at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños at that time.
On Thursday, Panelo confirmed that members of the Sanchez family paid a visit to his Malacañang office thrice in February, the same month he wrote to the BPP about Sanchez’s executive clemency bid. The BPP eventually rejected Sanchez’s bid. – Rappler.com
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