The head of the Iloilo Provincial Government’s Public Information and Community Affairs Office (PICAO) has been indicted for three counts of cyber libel.
The City Prosecutor’s Office denied Nereo Lujan’s motion for reconsideration in the cyber libel complaint filed by Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas.
In a resolution, Assistant City Prosecutor Caryl Kate Fabella-Genova said Lujan’s “reiteration of his defense of absence of defamatory imputation…is not meritorious.”
“[It’s] just a shallow excuse of the respondent’s intent to besmirch the reputation of the complainant,” she added.
The complaint stemmed from alleged libelous Facebook posts made by Lujan, a former journalist, against Treñas from 2023 to 2024.
In a statement, Treñas said the decision to junk Lujan’s appeal “reaffirms that freedom of expression does not give anyone the right to ridicule, humiliate, or maliciously put a public servant to shame.”
“While public officials are open to criticism, such freedom must not be abused to unjustly tarnish reputations through baseless and defamatory imputations,” he stressed.
“Let this serve as a reminder that while our democracy upholds free speech, it does not protect reckless, malicious, and defamatory attacks meant to destroy a person’s integrity,” Treñas further said.
In a Facebook post, Lujan said his camp “will exhaust all legal remedies in our pursuit of justice.”
“Let me emphasize that an indictment is not a conviction; this case will still go through due process.”
Lujan has been vocal on several issues in the city, including the demolition of the Iloilo Central Market, implementation of the Local Public Transport Route Plan (LPTRP), and the heavy traffic at the controversial Ungka flyover.IMT
