Cayetano vows to push for amendments to cybercrime law

MANILA, Philippines - Senate minority leader Alan Peter Cayetano vowed to push for amendments of the now controversial Cybercrime Prevent Act of 2012, which punitive provisions are being questioned by some sectors in the Supreme Court (SC).
Also a lawyer, Cayetano said the courts deals with the legalities but not the wisdom.
“A law can be totally unwise. I don’t want to use the word, stupid. A law can be stupid yet legal. A law can also be very good but illegal or unconstitutional. What the court can do is assert the constitutionality but it cannot undo a law or think it is to valid. Legislation is the solution here,” Cayetano said.
Cayetano said he and his legal staff are studying how to remove the penal provisions in the cybercrime act as well as the provision on online libel.
“I am of the opinion that in the same manner that we have supported the repeal of the penal provisions of libel law, we should move to civil cases. Hindi kasi puwedeng anyone can just say anything even if it is slander or it may affect a person,” Cayetano said.
Cayetano said he will push amendments for the new law once Congress resumes October 8.
“Pag may sinabing hindi totoo, civil damages dapat,” he said. “It’s your right to say that one is a thief, but it is also a right of that person to protect his name. A civil case can be a healthy compromise,” Cayetano said.
Cayetano said he is supportive to decriminalize libel and as such there could be needs to amend the new cybercrime law in the process.
“Right now, I think that is too harsh that libel is already a criminal case even without the cyber law. What more now it is applied in the internet,” Cayetano said.
Cayetano lamented that the inclusion of a libel clause in the new law went unnoticed during the deliberations of the measure in the plenary.
“To be fair to the author, to Sen. Angara and the others, these reactions weren’t all brought up, at least not this passionately when it was being discussed,” he said. (

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'Lawin' Update

At 4:00 p.m. today, the eye of Typhoon "LAWIN" (JELAWAT) was located based on satellite and surface data at 365 km Northeast of Itbayat, Batanes (23.7°N, 124.5°E) with maximum sustained winds of 175 kph near the center and gustiness of up to 210 kph. It is forecast to move Northeast at 17 kph.

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Indonesia seeks rules of road for West Philippine Sea

UNITED NATIONS—Indonesia is circulating among Southeast Asian nations a draft code of conduct for the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), hoping for progress before a regional summit in November, its foreign minister said Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has been trying to patch up differences among Association of Southeast Asian Nations members on how to manage the maritime territorial disputes that pit China against several of its neighbors in a region where sea lanes are crucial to world trade, rich fishing grounds and potentially major reserves of natural gas and oil.
He said that the situation in the region — also rattled by a separate island dispute between China and Japan — is very troubling, but countries including China recognize they have much to lose from conflict.
“There’s a recognition that the countries of the region have prospered and have developed precisely because there’s been very benign, stable conditions,” Natalegawa told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders. “This is something we don’t want to be tinkering with. It could become like a Pandora’s box.”
China claims most of the West Philippine Sea. In July it upped the ante in its sharp disagreements with the Philippines and Vietnam over who owns what by establishing a military garrison, which Beijing claims will administer a vast area of sea and tiny islands scattered across it.
Beijing wants to settle conflicting claims with individual nations rather than through a multilateral mechanism that will give the smaller members greater clout in negotiations.
Natelagawa, who met with his Chinese counterpart Tuesday, said there had been some adjustment in China’s position.
He said China recognizes “as much as anyone else” the need for diplomatic progress, including implementing a declaration of conduct — the non-binding agreement that Beijing signed up to with Asean in 2002. The code of conduct on peacefully resolving the West Philippine Sea sovereignty disputes is intended as the mechanism for putting that declaration into practice.
“What we are looking for is a basic rules-of-the-road type of arrangement for the South China Sea,” said Natelagawa, “so that countries behave in a manner that is expected of them in maintaining stability.”
In his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the disputes had been festering for the better part of a century and Asean was engaged in “earnest negotiations” for a legally binding code of conduct.
Natelagawa said “we will begin to test the waters” on the draft code in consultations with Southeast Asian governments this week in New York, hoping for progress before a summit of East Asian leaders to be held in Cambodia in November.
He said that was needed so the disputes don’t run “out of control.”
Indonesia, by far the largest of Asean’s 10 member states, is not itself a claimant in the West Philippine Sea, although as a sprawling island nation it has a major stake in the region’s stability.
In recent years, Jakarta has assumed a more prominent leadership role within the grouping, and remains on good terms with both the US and China, which are increasingly at odds over how to handle the sea disputes.

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S&P raises growth forecast for Philippines

International credit watcher Standard & Poor’s raised its growth forecast for the Philippines for 2012, even as it downgraded its outlook for other economies in Asia and the Pacific, saying the country has the capability to withstand unfavorable developments in the global economy.
In its latest report titled “Asia Pacific Feels the Pressure of Ongoing Global Economic Uncertainty,” S&P said it now expected the Philippine economy to expand by 4.9 percent, instead of the earlier projection of 4.3 percent, this year.
On the contrary, the credit-rating firm lowered its growth projections for several economies and kept its previous forecasts for a few others in the region to take into account the impact of the prolonged debt crisis in the eurozone, the still lackluster growth of the United States and the slowdown of China and India.

S&P said the unfavorable developments in the world’s biggest economies were expected to dampen growth of many Asia-Pacific countries, except for the Philippines.
The growth forecasts have been reduced by one percentage point for Hong Kong and India, which S&P now sees growing by just 1.8 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively.
The projections have been cut by about half a percentage point for China to 7.5 percent; Japan, 2 percent; South Korea, 2.5 percent; Singapore, 2.1 percent; and Taiwan, 1.9 percent. For Australia, the growth forecast was cut to 3 percent from 3.2 percent.
“The forecasts for other Asian economies remain unchanged except for the Philippines, which went to 4.9 percent from 4.3 percent, reflecting the ongoing strength of that domestic economy,” S&P said in the report.
The outlook of S&P for the Philippines, however, was still below the government’s official target of between 5 and 6 percent.
The government’s economic officials believed that the official target would be achieved, citing the above-target growth in the first semester of 6.1 percent. This was one of the fastest growth rates in the region.
The growth performance of the country was less affected by unfavorable global developments than those of other emerging Asia-Pacific economies partly because it relied less on exports to fuel economic growth. Export earnings account for about 30 percent of the Philippines’ gross domestic product. In some neighboring countries, exports account for more than half of GDP.
The weakness of the economies of the United States and Europe and the slowdown of China and India are weighing down on the growth prospects of many emerging markets because these big economies are major export markets.
Meantime, Philippine government officials credited the boost in public spending, strong household consumption (supported by remittances) and a highly liquid banking sector for the domestic economy’s growth performance.
“S&P’s upward revision of the GDP growth forecast for the Philippines validates our view that home-grown sources of resilience can buffer the economy from the external headwind,” Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas told reporters.

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