Detained Senator Leila de Lima on Thursday lauded the Olongapo Regional Trial Court judge who dismissed the sedition charges filed against a public school teacher who called out President Duterte for abuses.
(MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
De Lima is referring to Olongapo RTC Branch 72 Judge Richard Paradeza who dismissed the inciting to sedition charge against Ronnel Mas, a public school teacher, who was arrested without a warrant last May 11.
The former justice secretary said the dismissal of the charge against Mas is considered a victory in the people’s ongoing fight for human rights, democracy, free speech and independence.
“It was clear from the very start that Mas was illegally arrested. What was not so clear was if there remains a judge in the Philippines who would dare to uphold the rule of law at the cost of his own career, or maybe even of his own personal security,” De Lima said in her latest statement.
“I salute him for his courage to stare down at tyranny and injustice and his dedication to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” said the senator.
De Lima noted Paradeza quashed the information against Mas after noting that the operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) carried out an illegal arrest against the teacher, after a co-teacher identified him as the owner of a Twitter account that carried the now-deleted tweet offering a P50-million reward for anyone who would kill the President.
The NBI filed sedition charges against Mas in relation to the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, but Paradeza, in his one-page order, allowed Mas to post a P72,000 bail.
“It must have been a very difficult decision for him, not because of the complexity of the legal issue involved, but because the offended party was none other than the dictator himself,” said De Lima, a vocal critic of the Duterte administration.
“It is not easy to go against a strongman who is in complete control of the State’s apparatus for violence. I personally know this as I was Duterte’s very first example and object lesson on what happens to those who oppose him and his murdering ways,” she pointed out.
De Lima said she hopes to see more acts of judicial independence like the one exhibited by Paradeza happen as Duterte’s term nears its end.
“For me, there is still hope, as Judge Paradeza has demonstrated, that I can still expect justice, no matter how remotely, under the reign of the dictator, so long as there are men and women of the judiciary who will live up to their lawyers’ oath not to give aid or consent to any groundless, false or unlawful suit,” she said.