SC decision vs local executives for closing Isabela radio hailed

By Charlie Lagasca

CUAYAN CITY, Isabela – The recent Supreme Court decision ordering local officials here for causing the shutting down of a radio station in this city has been described as triumph of “freedom of the press and expression.”

Former Isabela Bishop Sergio Utleg, now the bishop of Laoag (Ilocos Norte) diocese, said Bombo Radyo in Cauayan City stood its ground in defending press freedom while its case was on trial until it went as far as the High Tribunal.

Utleg was the Isabela bishop when the Cauayan City government, then headed by mayor Caesar Dy ordered the closure of Bombo Radyo-Cauayan in 2004. He, with various militant groups, was fighting for the resumption of the radio outfit that time until it went back on air in 2006.

Likewise, prominent lawyer Romulo Macalintal, one of the first legal counsels of the radio station when it filed a case against the city government over the closure order, said the decision strengthened freedom of the press against those wanting to trample on it.

“May the decision serve as a lesson, if not a stern warning, to those who may be similarly-minded in violating one’s constitutional right of free speech and assembly,” he said.

Macalintal said that the SC decision “also gives meaning to the provision of the Omnibus Election Law that no one could close down a media entity during election period without authority from the (Commission on Elections).”

Said radio station had been closed down in 2004, the year the synchronized national and local elections were held where former hard-hitting Bombo broadcaster Grace Padaca defeated then governor Faustino Dy Jr., eldest brother of then Mayor Caesar Dy.

The city government then ordered the closure of the more than 30-year-old Bombo Radyo dzNC, a regionwide radio station, for its alleged failure to obtain a zoning clearance as well as mayor’s and business permits to operate. It also claimed that the station failed to secure a land conversion permit before it occupied the site where it is now based.

The Court’s second division, in its one-page resolution dated June 16, 2010 junked the motion for reconsideration of the city government to overturn last year’s ruling ordering them to indemnify Bombo Radyo-Cauayan for shutting down its operations in 2004.

The Court also ordered Dy and the co-respondents in the case, then city administrator Felicisimo Meer, then city legal counsel Racma Fernandez-Garcia and one Bagnos Maximo, to pay the radio station P5.5 million as damages and as attorney’s fees.