Punchline
The planned massacre of The PUNCH
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
IN the land of warlords, journalists are disposed of randomly with bullets and are buried with the backhoe. The Maguindanao massacre proved that.
In the land of the greedy privileged few, journalists who wave the press freedom flag and refuse to embrace the “inclusive growth” of influential businessmen and politicos, are now blatantly neutralized and systematically “liquidated ” by a flawed system that works for the rich and powerful. They dump press freedom if it gets in their way.
This is the situation being brought to bear on The PUNCH today.
On hindsight, the plot to systematically terminate The PUNCH’s existence was launched days before Mayor Belen Fernandez delivered her first 100 days. The ragtag but reorganized lapdogs of the Lim city hall unleashed another offensive to discredit The PUNCH (and Mayor Belen). Over the local radio lanes, the washed out PR spinmasters disguised as local journalists revived the old hogwash – the PUNCH has already lost its independence because it is already owned by Mayor Belen.
Towards what end? To pave the way for the desired seamless operation of the MC Adore properties Mr. Antonio Cabangon Chua, chairman of the Eternal Garden, acquired from the city. To have a pesky but credible newspaper like The PUNCH around is simply not good for his business.
He needs to impress upon Dagupeños that his company won the bid fairly and he is the investor that Dagupan needs. But it would seem Mr. Cabangon Chua himself is not certain that his acquisition was a fair deal because he is adopting extraneous means today to convince himself that he won the bid fairly and squarely.
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MEDIA CONTROL. He knows enough about importance of media independence being the owner of Philippine Graphic, Business Mirror and DWIZ in Manila (and in Dagupan) but he is now seen to be desperate to control the local media thru the Pangasinan Press Club. But he obviously thinks he must plot the early demise of The PUNCH through a frivolous libel case to complete the rout. For better effect, he files the case in Pasig City, not in Dagupan City where his Citystate Savings bank is embroiled in a legal mess with the city government. (With this mindset, he also desperately wants the pending case on the MC Adore sale before Judge Mervin Jovito Samadan to be transferred to a friendly court in Makati or Pasig where he holds sway).
Mr. Cabangon Chua is known to be the kind of guy who gets what he wants the way he wants it. And today, his mouth is salivating over the huge profits that he stands to make after submitting an atrociously low bid for the MC Adore properties. And it also appears he is bent on making anyone who gets in the way of his “inclusive growth” to bear the brunt of his vast resources and well-heeled connections.
There is no moderating his greed as his libel case has shown.
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UNPRECEDENTED LIBEL CASE. The plot to the massacre The PUNCH revealed itself surreptitiously through a subpoena from the city prosecutor’s office in Pasig City citing me and seven staffers listed in our editorial box who had nothing to do with the writing of stories on the MC Adore imbroglio. The libel complaint was filed by a proxy, a Roger Diaz, an officer of the Citystate Savings Bank.
Translation: It was Mr. Antonio Cabangon Chua, a former ambassador appointed by disgraced President Gloria Arroyo, that filed and not the bank because everyone knows that nothing moves in the Cabangon Chua group of companies without the bossman’s say so. So, let’s call a spade a spade.
Of course, I was initially fazed on seeing my skeletal editorial and production staff being directly threatened and intimidated by Mr. Cabangon Chua. And I believe that’s exactly what Mr. Cabangon Chua, the bank’s chairman, wants me to feel.
In all my 50 years in the practice of journalism, I had never seen a more blatant and so obvious a design to mortally cripple and annihilate a newspaper than Mr. Cabangon-Chua’s libel case against us. The many jurisprudence in libel cases worldwide only showed editors, publishers, identified reporters behind questioned articles being sued. In fact, business managers and circulation managers are being summarily excluded since they are not directly involved in the preparation and writing of suspected libelous articles. In this case, Mr. Cabangon Chua, also the chairman of Eternal Gardens, he wants my editorial and production staff hauled to the court simply because they work for The PUNCH.
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HYPOCRISY OF COMPLAINT. I don’t have to discuss the merit of that libel case because our article speaks for itself. What I found shameless on the part of Mr. Cabangon Chua is the hypocrisy of his complaint.
He crowed over the fact that Citystate was cited for numerous achievements based on its integrity as a banking establishment, and therefore, the issue about the alleged non-payment of electric bills tainted kuno the integrity of the bank. But he stopped there. He was ominously silent about the item in the same news story that said his Citystate Bank was operating without a business permit, hence, it is operating illegally.
If the case is, indeed, an integrity issue for him, why is Mr. Cabangon Chua insisting to operate his bank without a business permit and a renovation permit? Isn’t his illegal operation an integrity issue? Apparently, his double standard says, it is not.
The fact that Mr. Cabangon Chua has chosen to sue only Decorp’s Jojo Liwag and did not include the Decorp’s key officers and board of directors, in contrast to what he did to The PUNCH, makes his motive even more suspect. Mr. Cabangon Chua is using the official documents of Decorp as his own evidence to back his claim that allegations about non-payment of electric bills and illegal tapping of the city’s electric meter in the news item were without basis, so why is he not suing them but only Mr. Liwag? Unfortunately for Mr. Liwag, Mr. Cabangon Chua decided to use him as a mere scapegoat just so he would feel justified to force The PUNCH down on its knees.
The news item pointed out that the central issue to the allegations of non- payment of electric bills was the fact that the city of Dagupan refused to issue him the needed business permit. Any aggrieved party, like Mr. Cabangon Chua claims to be, would have had Mayor Belen and City Engineer Virginia Rosario on top of the list of respondents for refusing to issue the permit, but he didn’t. Why didn’t Mr. Cabangon Chua name them as respondents, as the main culprits behind his misery? Let me venture to read his thoughts. He chose not to sue them because doing so would have promptly led to the closure of his esteemed bank, and the banking world would know that his organization is operating illegally. Ah, that’s bad for business where integrity counts when all he wants is to see The PUNCH’s head hanging on an electric post.
While we are on this issue, we are rudely reminded to again ask Mayor Belen: Why, indeed, is the Citystate Bank being allowed to continue to operate without a business permit to this day? She is grossly mistaken if she thinks she can still bide her time. What she and her advisers may not be aware of is the fact that she is opening herself to a possible filing of a complaint by her detractors before the ombudsman for dereliction of duty – for failing or refusing to enforce the city’s ordinance, and worse, to be suspected of being on the take for closing her eyes to the banks’ illegal operations.
But knowing now how Mr. Cabangon Chua has become so desperate to immediately cash in on his acquisition of MC Adore for a pittance, I will not be surprised if he is already plotting to get back at Mayor Belen for standing in his way, pretty much like how he perceives The PUNCH to continue doing – reporting on suspected irregularities that accompanied his cheap acquisition of the MC Adore properties through the generosity of then Mayor Lim.
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CONNECTIONS. I’ve read and heard the intention of rich and powerful Mr. Cabangon Chua loud and clear. He can call on noted columnists and radio commentators in his stable and some “friendly” opinion makers, some of whom I know were contemporaries of my late father in his early days as a reporter in Manila. They will be asked to pounce on me for doing a great disservice to the legacy of my father as the “martyr-journalist”.
His libel case is as direct as he could to tell all and sundry that he is out to crush The PUNCH so that we will never stand in his way again. He has made certain that I am aware of his vast resources and well-heeled connections in politics, business and religious groups because his minions brag about them. Yes, I have no doubt he has the resources to back up his threat, and that he knows I don’t have the means to match his, not by a long shot.
I have no doubt, too, that Mr. Cabangon Chua, the owner of the Orchids Hotel and Warehouse in Dagupan, is very chummy with Archbishop Soc Villegas, Guv Spines, etc., His lapdogs want me to know that. The veiled threat is he can make them discredit my work very much like how Guv Spines was manipulated to do the ceremonial swearing in of a discredited bunch of local mediamen as officers of the Pangasinan Press Club in violation of a standing court order. Did the embarrassment suffered by the Guv affect Mr. Cabangon Chua? His shabby sergeants in the local media just laughed off any insinuation that their boss was remorseful.
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SOLEMN PROMISE. So, am I supposed to be shaking down on my knees at the mention of Mr. Cabangon Chua’s name? I know I am expected to. However, his and his advisers’ short memory made him forget that I had been sued for P50-million with a possible jail term on my head in 1999 in my capacity as publisher of then-Gokongwei-owned Manila Times by no less than President Erap.
Can Mr. Cabangon Chua do any worse? Get us jailed? Even The PUNCH’s lead defense, Atty. Harry Roque, seriously doubts that very much.
Well, to Mr. Cabangon-Chua, I have this to say to him: Do your worst to have The PUNCH dumped by the wayside, and I will do my best to keep the ugly truths about your business deals in Pangasinan that you can’t handle, continue to be reported for all Pangasinenses and the rest of the nation to know. This is not a threat. Consider it a solemn promise from The PUNCH and the Pangasinenses who share our mission.
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