Widow of journalist in massacre denies overstepping bounds vs CA
MANILA, Philippines – A widow of a journalist, one of the victims in the Maguindanao massacre, has denied crossing legal boundaries when she publicly criticized two Court of Appeals justices for not recusing themselves from hearing a petition by massacre suspect Zaldy Ampatuan to dismiss the murder charges filed by the Justice Department against him and raising fears that the justices had been bribed.
Monette Salaysay, through her counsel, the Roque and Butuyan Law Offices, filed her compliance last week with the Court of Appeals, following a five-day deadline imposed by the court for her to explain why she and National Union Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) secretary general Rowena Paraan should not be held in contempt for publicly criticizing Associate Justices Danton Bueser and Marlene Sison-Gonzales.
Salaysay’s husband, Napoleon, publisher and editor of the Mindanao Gazette, was among the 57 people brutally killed on Nov. 23, 2009 in Ampatuan town in a murder allegedly planned by the family of Zaldy, a suspended governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), and carried out by his younger brother, Andal Ampatuan, Jr.
Salaysay’s lawyers said that her reaction was prompted by an allegation made by Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Ramon Tulfo that he had heard P200 million “changed hands” in the appellate court to let Zaldy off the hook from the massacre.
“The reaction and statement made by [Salaysay] was a natural, inevitable, and unavoidable reaction and manifestation of feelings of a multiple murder victim-litigant who – after losing a loved one in the most horrendous massacre in the annals of the country’s history – was again being subjected to highly disturbing circumstances which was naturally perceived by her as leading to grave injustice being perpetrated in the instant case,” they said.
Had Beuser and Sison explained why they inhibited themselves from hearing the petition filed by Andal Sr., but not in the similar one filed by his son, Zaldy, Salaysay’s lawyers said her “natural fear… would have been promptly allayed and the verbalization of her natural feelings would have been avoided.”
Salaysay also asked the appellate court to defer the resolution of its contempt proceedings until after the Supreme Court has resolved the ethics investigation she and other massacre widows had asked for stemming from Tulfo’s bribery allegation.
She also urged the appellate court to dismiss the indirect contempt proceedings and reiterated her call for the inhibition of Bueser and Sison from participating in the petition of Zaldy Ampatuan that asked the appellate court to uphold a decision by former Justice Secretary Alberto Agra that cleared him from the murder charges.
Agra later reversed his decision after state prosecutors protested and included Zaldy Ampatuan in the murder charges.
Salaysay’s counsel also urged Beuser and Gonzales to inhibit themselves from hearing the contempt case as the appellate court’s order for her and Paraan to explain had apparently already found them guilty.
“(B)y the tenor of the subject resolution, the Honorable Court has already adjudged respondents [Salaysay and Paraan] guilty as charged. It has already made a factual finding of contumacious and contemptuous remarks against the justices concerned even before the respondents’ side on the matter can be given a hearing,” they said.
Salaysay and Paraan were ordered by the appellate court to explain why they should not be held in contempt for saying in a March 3 Inquirer article raising the alleged bribery issue and questioned the non-inhibition of Beuser and Sison in Zaldy Ampatuan’s petition.
