Roberto R. Romulo’s libel suit vs The STAR dismissed

Presidential Adviser Roberto R. Romulo got a triple whammy with the dismissal of the P50-million libel case he filed against Philippine STAR publisher and chairman Maximo Soliven, its editors, columnist Jose Manuel Romualdez, STAR executors and others.

Docketed as Civil Case No. 04-840 at the Makati Regional Trial Court, Branch 66 Presiding Judge Ricardo Rosario dismissed the case in a Sept. 5, 2005 ruling.

Two criminal libel cases filed by Romulo were earlier dismissed by the Makati City Third Assistant City Prosecutor Carlito Calpatura last January, and by Makati Assistant City Prosecutor Melquiades Mutiangpili in a resolution released in March.

In the cases docketed as I.S. No.04-1-17482-85 and IS No. 04-13019-47, the Makati City Prosecutors ruled that Romulo was a public officer, as seen by his various appointments as special envoy to the Middle East and as chair of the Public-Private Sector Task Force for the Reconstruction of Iraq, and as chairman of ITECC.

To prove the claim that plaintiff Roberto Romulo was a public officer when the alleged libelous items were published, the defendants cited Romulo’s admission that he was co-chairman of the Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (ITECC) created through Executive Order no. 264 by then president Joseph Estrada and, as such, provided the "policy and institutional environment to ensure the long-term and dynamic use, application and exploitation of ICT in the achievement of national goals," as stated in Section 2 of the Executive Order.

In his ruling, Rosario also cited Article 203 of the Revised Penal Code, which defined a public officer as "any person who, by direct provision of the law, popular election or appointment by competent authority… shall be deemed to be a public officer." From the foregoing definition, a person is considered a public officer if the following requisites concur: 1) that he is taking part in the performance of public function in the government; and 2) his authority to take part in the performance of public functions or duties must be by direct provision of the law, by popular election, or by appointment by competent authority.

Rosario also ruled that whether Romulo received a salary or not, he indubitably performed a public function because it had been sufficiently established that his work with ITECC was intended to benefit the government.

Rosario also pointed out a Supreme Court ruling in the case of Soriano vs. IAC, GR No. 72383, which emphatically declared that while public officers and private individuals who are wronged through an inordinate exercise by newspapermen or media of freedom of speech and of the press have every right to avail themselves of the legal remedies of libel, the court at the same time should be "vigilant against all attempts to harass or persecute an independent press or restrain and chill the free expression of opinions.

"In this case, the intent of amendment (of Article 360) is to avoid the harassment of media persons through libel suits instituted in distant or out-of-the-way towns by public officers who could more conveniently file cases in their place of work."

Romulo had claimed that a series of articles published in the Philippine STAR had been libelous, and demanded that his replies be published in full.

A 1974 ruling by the US Supreme Court had ruled that the issue of right to reply was against the First Amendment guarantee of a free press, as seen in the case of the Miami Herald Publishing Co. which had run a series of articles critical of a candidate running for a state office and had refused to print the candidate’s replies. In an earlier ruling, the Florida Circuit Court had also concluded that dictating what a newspaper must print is no different from dictating what a newspaper must not print. The settled rule in the US is that opinion is absolutely protected by the freedom of speech and of the press clause in their constitution.