7 City dads insist they were libeled
BACOLOD CITY — Seven Bacolod City Councilors who filed a Libel complaint against the Editor-In-Chief of the Aguila newspaper, Mr. Erwin Ambo S. Delilan, for alleged defamatory publication relative to the alleged “live sex scandal”, recently filed before the City Prosecutor’s Office a Reply-Affidavit in response to the Counter-Affidavit executed by Delilan.
Councilors Greg G. Gasataya, Homer Bais, Dindo Ramos, Wilson C. Gamboa Jr., Al Victor Espino, Roberto Rojas and Alex Paglumotan maintained that said article is defamatory because it refers to a married young city councilor of Bacolod City having sex with his paramour while his four other fellow city councilors were watching.
Atty. Vicente Petierre Jr., lawyer of the seven City Councilors, said that they refuted the counter affidavit of Mr. Delilan putting up as his defense the alleged absence of the fourth element of the crime of Libel which is the identity of the person defamed, practically admitting the existence of the three other elements which are imputation of a discreditable act or condition to another, publication of the imputation and the existence of malice.
As stated in the Reply-Affidavit, the complainant City Councilors believed that they are the persons maliciously referred to in those derogatory articles. “If we felt that we were not defamed, degraded, dishonored, humiliated and embarrassed by the articles of the respondent, then we could have not filed this case against the respondent and spent a considerable amount of money just to have ourselves vindicated from these malicious, baseless and malevolent articles. The fact that we took up the cudgels in filing these cases against the respondent would only mean that we suffered more than enough just to keep our silence to these blatant lies and falsehoods peeled by the respondent in his widely distributed (for free) newspaper,” states their reply-affidavit.