Lubao’s mayor Pineda hits ‘malicious insinuations’ against his family by media

BY GEORGE TRILLO

LUBAO, Pampanga – Lubao Mayor Denis Pineda, son of defeated gubernatorial candidate Lilia Pineda, urged the media to be fair in reporting saying news accounts blamed his family for recent violent incidents in the province.

“The election is over. Like the rest of the electorate, our family has gone back to our quiet, private life,” Mayor Pineda said in a statement. “Whatever our misgivings about the election results, we have lodged them with the agency concerned in exercise of our right as candidate and as citizen and in total submission to the democratic processes. Whatever would be the result of this action, we humbly entrust it to God and the law.”

He said “despite their silence or maybe because of it,” his family primarily his father has become the object of malicious insinuations, even accusations of the messages that insinuated the Pineda family was behind the “murderous rampage” in Mabalacat town where four barangay chairmen were alleged to have been shot dead in four successive days last week.

“There were no actual killings of barangay chairmen there,” he said.

The police themselves have categorically stated that not one barangay chairman had been hurt or killed there.

The death of a purok leader in Dau was deemed by the police as a crime of passion, not politically motivated, the mayor said.

News reports of political vendetta were alluded to alleged gambling lord Bong Pineda in connection with the death of the barangay captain of San Juan Bautista, Guagua. This, in effect, is already a pre-judgement of the case even as the policemen have yet to come out with their initial findings, he said.

“Utterly unfounded, the allusion is most unfair and a gross injustice to my father and our family,” the mayor also said.

Death threats, through text messages, were reportedly sent to just about every barangay chairman in the whole Pampanga, and these are also being blamed on the Pineda family.

“That there are many who have steadfastly stood by us through the years are not spared of this terror threat definitively makes these insinuations a brazen lie,” Mayor Pineda said.

“I take this opportunity to re-express the gratitude of the Pineda family to the hundreds of barangay chairmen, kagawads, and purok leaders who supported us during the campaign and who continue to support us. As political wards, they make true and tested friends especially in these trying times,” he said.

The mayor described as totally devoid of factual basis allegations in one newspaper that “campaign funds were allotted to barangay chairmen to ensure the victory of Mrs. Pineda.”

The same report stated barangay chairmen were herded to an undisclosed places to make them explain where they spent the money given them and why they failed to make Mrs. Pineda win.

“This is not only a flagrant disrespect of the integrity of the barangay chairmen, but also a gross insult to their intelligence,” Pineda said.

“It is in this regard that I appeal for the media to adhere to the tenets of fairness, accuracy and responsibility in their reports. He cited a provision in the Journalist’s Code of Ethics that he duty of the newspaperman is to “scrupulously report the news, taking the utmost care, neither to suppress basic facts to the story nor to distort the truth by omission or improper emphasis.

He said it disturbs him greatly that “the confidentiality clause enshrined in your Code of Ethics was grossly violated when he was liberally quoted in one newspaper even after he told the reporter that that what he expressed were in confidence and should not be printed.

“Please be fair. Like any ordinary citizen, we, members of the Pineda family, are entitled to be treated fairly and justly,” Mayor Pineda said.