Canard of a leak | Inquirer Opinion

Canard of a leak | Inquirer Opinion

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Note:

Former Chief justice A. Panganiban assails a US Embassy official for making a baseless hearsay-based report which dishonored his name. He also assails a Filipino reporter for reporting the same without verifying her facts. A Wikileaks expose of US diplomatic documents has led to so much embarrassment to many parties and countries concerned worldwide.


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Canard of a leak. While I was abroad during the last three weeks, a broadsheet (not the Inquirer) tried to sensationalize on its front page, a five-column, boxed item, titled “Former chief justice rates a leak in WikiLeaks.” To attract attention, it even displayed my colored photo. Authored by Ellen Tordesillas, the item enticingly began, “I love WikiLeaks. It unmasks the
two-faced. It reveals the double-life of many of the officials that we respect.”

Then, citing a cable allegedly sent in September 2006 to Washington D.C. by Paul Jones, deputy chief of mission of the US
Embassy in Manila and released publicly by WikiLeaks, the article accused me of being “the protector of Filipino-Chinese businessman Mariano Nocom, whose malls were said to have been selling pirated goods” in violation of intellectual property (IP) laws.

Apparently, Jones was following up the prosecution of intellectual property cases filed by the Optical Media Board (OMB) headed by Edu Manzano. He noted that OMB “filed all almost all of its (search) warrant applications with Judge (Antonio) Eugenio… (who) approved most of OMB’s requests and quickly.”
In his leaked cable, Jones—quoting Manzano—told his American superiors in Washington, D.C. that Nocom, who was supposedly “well-connected to” me as then chief justice, asked and got the Court to yank out Eugenio from his job to stop him from further issuing search warrants on Nocom’s malls.

When I was informed about this ludicrous article, I called Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez long distance from Morocco saying I have never met Nocom, never spoken with him directly or indirectly. I know him only by name and face because I had seen him attend the retirement ceremonies of two justices.

After our conversation, Marquez promptly sent a letter to the broadsheet explicitly denying that I was the “protector” of Nocom, stressing that I hardly knew him and that he did “not exert any influence” at all on me. He added that Eugenio was “never replaced as a commercial court judge, and as such, remains to date a judge of a commercial court where he continues to hear IP cases.”

Three days later, the broadsheet in an innocuous back-page article, also bylined by Ellen Tordesillas, backtracked a bit saying “a friend in the Supreme Court told me (Tordesillas) that true, Nocom has protectors in the High Court, but as far as he knows it is not former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban.” A week later, Marquez’s letter was printed in an inside page of the broadsheet.

I am amazed and saddened that an otherwise credible journalist like Tordesillas could write a canard of a leak that is completely false and baseless. And without checking, could unabashedly “love WikiLeaks” and instantly conclude that the unverified leak “reveals the double life of many officials that we respect.”

But I am perturbed that the US Embassy (which did not deny the leak) would report as gospel truth a brazen lie that I was the “protector” of Nocom. The US Embassy could have easily called the Office of the Court Administrator to verify that Eugenio was never replaced. As Sherlock Holmes would say, “Elementary my dear Watson.”
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