DAGUPAN CITY – False report destroys all presumptions.

Thus determined the City Prosecutor’s Office here last Monday that the Lyceum Northwestern University was a victim of a false and unfair publicity and gave due course to a libel case filed by LNU president Gonzalo Duque against high-ranking officials of the Commission on Higher Education and a reporter of a national daily.

 In a resolution, City Prosecutor Pelagio Palma indicted for the crime of libel Dr. Catherine Castañeda, assistant director, Office of Programs and Standards (CHED); Dr. Fely Marilyn Lorenzo, chairman, Technical Committee on Nursing Education (CHED); and Jonathan Hicap, reporter of The Manila Times.    

CHED chairman Dr. Carlito Puno and Dr. William Medrano, executive director of the Office of Programs and Standards, were earlier included as respondents but Duque withdrew the complaint against them for insufficiency of evidence.

The Manila Times publisher and editor-in-chief, Fred dela Rosa, was not indicted after Palma found no sufficient evidence against him.

The case stemmed from the publication of a news story in The Manila Times last March 15, 2006 that quoted CHED officials as saying LNU was among the 37 “very low performing nursing schools” and among those whose nursing courses will be gradually phased out.

In his complaint, Duque said that the school has not received any prior notice from CHED or from the Professional Regulation Commission regarding its inclusion in the list and added that the LNU College of Nursing had 256 passers during the December 2005 Nursing board examinations and that one of the school’s successful examinees, Michelle Lim Aglubat, placed 7th.

Just last June, three of its successful examinees, Russel Abalos, Benedict Mayo and Melody Aquino, placed 7th, 8th and 9th respectively, while 236 others passed the examinations.

Duque also said that LNU was granted deregulated status on November 23, 2003 as shown by the Award of Distinction of the CHED.

Duque also argued that the timing of the publication was suspect, considering that the school year at that time was about to end and the enrollment for the next school year was to start shortly thereafter.

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