IN a move as shocking as it is anomalous, Solicitor General Marlene Berberabe asked the Supreme Court on March 6 to reverse the 2020 conviction by the Manila Regional Trial Court — affirmed unanimously by the three-man Court of Appeals in 2022 — of Rappler CEO Maria Ressa for cyberlibel in a suit filed by a businessman in 2017.
Ressa and her accomplice, Reynaldo Santos Jr., were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime of cyberlibel, ordered jailed for six months to six years and to pay the complainant P400,000. The two, however, asked the Supreme Court in July 2022 to reverse the courts’ conviction. Both are out on bail.
SolGen Berberabe shocked the legal community when she asked the court to acquit Ressa, claiming the one-year prescription for the crime had lapsed, pointing to an October 2023 decision by the Supreme Court. She conveniently ignored an earlier 2018 court ruling in Tolentino v. People (GR 24031, Aug. 6, 2018) that the prescription period is 15 years.
Berberabe was ignorant or pretended to be ignorant of Article VIII, Section 4(3) of the Constitution: “No doctrine or principle of law laid down by the court in a decision rendered en banc or in division may be modified or reversed except by the court sitting en banc.” The court has not reversed the 2018 ruling; it stands as the established jurisprudence on the prescription period for cyberlibel.
It’s an open and shut case, but Berberabe thinks her position as Solicitor General can get the Supreme Court justices to reverse the Manila Regional Trial Court’s decision, upheld by the Court of Appeals. Such naivete is obviously due to the fact that Berberabe has had practically no experience in the legal world, having been corporate lawyer for foreign firms and CEO of Pag-Ibig Fund during President Aquino III’s administration.
Defiant to the end? Despite the courts’ declaration that it is a crime, Ressa hasn’t deleted the libelous anti-Corona article. (Screenshot from Rappler website accessed yesterday: https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/6061-cj-using-suvs-of-controversial-businessmen/.) Inset: Solicitor General Berberabe.
Sole lawyer of Republic
Berberabe’s move demonstrated the extent of Ressa’s influence in government circles thanks to the US Deep State’s backing; her audacity to try to bend the law to escape justice; and her alleged close but unprincipled friendship with the state’s attorney.
The SolGen is the sole lawyer of the Republic of the Philippines that represents it in all court cases. It has never represented a private individual — much less a US citizen whose official residence is in New York.
The SolGen’s sole and strict duty is to represent the government and no other entity, such that law establishing its duties, Presidential Decree 478 of 1974, even required that the president must issue formal permission for it to represent government corporations.
For the SolGen to go to Ressa’s aid would be as scandalous as asking the Supreme Court to reverse the Sandiganbayan’s conviction of pork-barrel mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles, who has also filed an appeal at the Court.
What makes my blood boil is that the Office of the Solicitor General is funded by the state’s budget, from taxpayers’ money: I and you, reader, are in effect paying for the legal defense of this US citizen.
Yet another: Bernabe in the Congress’ hearings in which she asked for a P2 billion budget disclosed an amazing fact: The OSG is handling around 450,000 active cases, so that each of its 300 lawyers handles 1,500 cases each on average.
Despite her office’s tremendous workload as sole lawyer for government, she still organized a six-man team of OSG officers to find a loophole to reverse the two courts’ decision. Probably to impress the Supreme Court or in order that it’s not only her neck that is stuck out in this venture, she ordered her two assistant solicitor generals and two state solicitors to sign her defense of Ressa.
A hatchet job
Ressa and Rappler, for many years since the case was filed, have been screaming that it is a case of press suppression. It is rather the devil claiming to be an angel. Ressa’s libel case is one of the worst cases in this country of media being weaponized for malevolent aims: The libelous article was a blatant hatchet job.
Rappler’s May 29, 2012 article was part of the well-financed vicious vilification campaign against then-chief justice Renato Corona*, undertaken to give the senators of the impeachment court the justification — “air cover,” as it is dubbed in politics — to convict Corona.
Corona’s impeachment was the despicable project of President Aquino III’s clan to remove him so the Supreme Court would reverse its ruling that Hacienda Luisita should be paid only P170 million for being put under agrarian reform. The Aquino clan demanded P3 billion. Aquino also wanted the Supreme Court to be under his thumb — Corona was appointed to the post by President Arroyo — so that he put in instead a college friend Maria Lourdes Sereno, who was, however, later ousted in 2018 by the Supreme Court itself for not being qualified for the post.
Ressa allowed a researcher Santos, just four months in the job, to write an article which alleged that Corona was using an SUV owned by a respected power and property businessman, whom the article claimed “had been under surveillance by the National Security Council for alleged involvement in illegal activities, namely human trafficking and drug smuggling, as well as in a murder case.”
Entirely false
These were proven to be entirely without basis in the subsequent court hearings. My own sources at that time disclosed these canards were fed by a former top national security official to Rappler’s “editor-at-large,” who ordered the hapless researcher to write the libelous piece.
And as hubris often leads to the downfall of the mighty, so was the case with Ressa. She posted an updated version of the 2012 article in February 2014, which the court found to be in violation of the Cybercrime Prevention Act (RA 10175) that took effect in 2012, and which imposes graver penalties than merely libel.
Portraying to the world that we have a Third-World crazy justice system that is being used to persecute her, Ressa has been claiming she was convicted of a crime that didn’t exist. This is blatantly false, as the libelous article that was prosecuted was the updated, new version of the original May 2012 article, which was posted February 2014, when the cybercrime law passed in 2012 was in effect. And with the courts’ ruling that cybercrime has a 15-year prescription period, Ressa can be prosecuted until 2029.
Article still there
Actually, even without the reposting, Ressa has been committing a continuing crime under the 2012 Cybercrime Law, since she had not deleted the article ever. I was able to access it yesterday, as shown in the accompanying image. This is certainly an indication of Ressa’s view of this country — that she can defy even the courts, even going to the extent of reportedly spending P20 million so far in legal fees for four top law firms, partly financed by donations from purported press-freedom advocates who detest former president Duterte.
By asking for Ressa’s acquittal based on a doctrine still under review, the SolGen claimed as jurisprudence the one favoring her friend before the Supreme Court has completed its deliberations. This is an intrusion into the court’s domain, a display of total disrespect by the executive branch’s sole lawyer toward the highest court of the land.
What is troubling in the Ressa case is that because of her propaganda that hers is a case of press suppression, she has managed to recruit American press-freedom crusaders to put pressure first on the lower courts, and now on the Supreme Court itself.
But Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 46 Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa** and the Court of Appeals justices Roberto Quiroz, Ramon Cruz and Mario Lopez upheld the Constitution and the laws of the land, steadfastly stood their ground against foreign intervention, saw through Ressa’s fake victimhood, and convicted Ressa and her accomplice. I’m quite sure the Supreme Court will too, and Berberabe’s anomalous intervention will prove as desperate as it is the kiss of death for Ressa’s case.
*Corona was convicted by the Senate impeachment court on May 29, 2012, officially for failure to disclose his financial assets, unofficially because of Rappler and the Yellow mainstream media’s intense black propaganda in portraying him as dishonest to be a chief justice. He passed away in 2016 at 67 years old, officially because of a heart attack, unofficially because of despondency over his unjust removal from office. With Ressa’s conviction, Corona would be served justice, at least partially. President Aquino III, who ordered his removal as chief justice, died in 2021 at age 61, due to kidney failure, after living years in seclusion, apparently so fearful of being killed he had bodyguards posted right outside his bedroom.
**Montesa was appointed in October 2025 as one of the Supreme Court’s deputy court administrators. The high court’s press release on this said that she has been presiding judge in various courts from 2006 to 2024, and was considered one of the few specialists in cybercrime in the country. The Manila Trial Court Branch 46, which she headed and which convicted Ressa, is a special commercial and cybercrime court set up in 2013.
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