(Eagle News)–The Pasay City Prosecutors Office has approved the filing of a libel case against Thinking Pinoy blogger RJ Nieto.
This was after Associate Prosecution lawyer Honey Rose Delgado found the elements of libel under the Cybercrime Prevention Act were present in the post written by Nieto on Facebook in Oct. 2017, as alleged by Senator Antonio Trillanes IV.
In the post, Nieto quoted US President Donald Trump as saying Trillanes was a “narco,” which the post said was the “colloquial word for a drug baron or drug lord.”
“Respondent imputed a crime, vice, defect, act, condition, and status against the complainant when he posted that he is a ‘narco, drug baron or drug lord,” Delgado said in a three-page resolution approved by Senior Assistant Prosecutor Remmel Balinbin and Dolores Rillera, officer in charge of the Pasay City Prosecutor’s Office.
Delgado also noted the “written imputation” was made publicly as it was done on Facebook, online, and on Thinking Pinoy, which is a “public account.”
She noted the post was shared 15, 759 Facebook users.
“It is true that a public official, most especially an elected one, should not be onion-skinned…However, this should not be an excuse for anyone to make baseless lies and make up stories against any public official, especially so when there is no good motive or justifiable reason for doing so,” she said.