(Eagle News)–The National Union of People’s Lawyers on Monday, April 22, said the matrix story on a supposed plot to oust President Rodrigo Duterte merely “lays the ground for more attacks against independent media.”
The NUPL, which was implicated in the supposed plot, issued the statement as it called the story written by The Manila Times chairman emeritus Dante Ang a “marvel of unethical and amateurish writing” that was “based on a single anonymous source and a matrix showing a web of threads so tenuous it would not hold up in the slightest breeze..”
“Ang’s piece of claptrap wouldn’t even pass muster at any self-respecting high school publication,” the NUPL said, noting that Inday Espina Varona was listed in the matrix as among National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) members when she was “neither a lawyer nor connected to the NUPL” anymore.
According to the NUPL, “what Ang has done is no different from the narco-lists his principal, President Rodrigo Duterte, is so fond of trotting out every now and then sans evidence but which often amount to hit lists, death sentences without the benefit of trial.”
The group said Ang’s source for the story, “supposing there was one – and the writer do not even bother to explain the nature of the links, if any, between Vera Files, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and Rappler on one hand, and the NUPL, on the other except by claiming preposterously that these media outfits and the Left have aligned themselves in a plot to oust Duterte – a tale as old, and as stale, as time.”
“What we do fear is that this ‘revelation’ could be a prelude to a crackdown against independent media and human rights lawyers,” the NUPL said.
It thus urged “the community of independent Filipino journalists and news outfits to close ranks and resist any attempt to silence the press.”
“Should any harm come to those he has maligned, Dante Ang should be held just as fully accountable,” it said.
“Again, we reiterate, history has proven that attempts to silence the independent Philippine press may succeed for a while but, in the end, the truth will out and tyrants will always end up in the dustbin of history,” it added.
