ILOILO City – Ilonggo Senate minority leader Franklin Drilon filed criminal raps for four counts of cyberlibel against a critic who was earlier sentenced by the Pasay Regional Trial Court Branch (RTC) 118 to four years and two months imprisonment over libelous social media posts against the senator.
Drilon went to the Office Pasay City Prosecutor Elmer Cris Rillo yesterday morning to file the case against Manuel Mejorada, former Iloilo provincial administrator and blogger.
The subjects of Drilon’s case were videos posted by Mejorada in his personal YouTube account, where he accused the senator of corruption, overpricing and other anomalies.
Despite his conviction, Drilon said, Mejorada continued undeterred with his imputations.
The RTC sentenced Mejorada with an imprisonment of two to four years in 2017, which the Court of Appeals affirmed and even extended the sentence to maximum of four years and two months.
The videos were titled as follows:
* “Drilon’s monument of corruption revisited” published on May 27
* “Ang pagbaboy ni Drilon ng perang galing sa DAP sa Iloilo Convention Center” published on May 29
* “Disadvantageous, onerous, lopsided ang contract ni Drilon sa Iloilo Convention Center” published on June 2
* “Huli si Drilon sa kanyang kasinungalingan” published on June 12.
“I was already taken aback by the individual titles of the videos themselves, as these already clearly show an imputation on my person of a crime, or of a vice or defect,” Drilon said in his complaints.
He added: “The imputation of these crimes is part of the continuous and deliberate efforts of Mr. Mejorada to injure my reputation and character.”
After Drilon filed the previous counts of libel against Mejorada, for which he was convicted, he had continuously published statements of the same nature, according to the senator, despite the fact that not only the court but also the Ombudsman dismissed as “baseless and malicious” all the accusations.
“Clearly, Mejorada’s tirades subsequent to his conviction and indictment were motivated by spite, further bolstering that his was motivated by malice, more than anything else, in his defamatory imputations,” Drilon stated in his complaints.
Aside from Drilon’s libel case, Mejorada is facing multiple libel complaints. He was recently nabbed over a libel complaint filed by then Iloilo governor Arthur Defensor Sr./PN
