ILOILO City – A court in Pasay City, Metro Manila issued a hold departure order against former Iloilo provincial administrator Manuel Mejorada, who was earlier convicted for libel over social media posts that targeted Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon.
The order was penned by Judge Rowena Nieves Tan of the Regional Trial Court Branch 118 dated Dec. 9, 2020.
Tan directed the Commissioner of the Bureau of Immigration to prevent Mejorada from leaving the country “until further orders” from the court.
He was convicted by the Pasay Regional Trial Court twice.
A warrant of arrest was issued against Mejorada in 2020 after the Supreme Court affirmed with finality the decision of the lower court finding him guilty of four counts of libel and sentenced him to an imprisonment of two to four years.
Mejorada has since been in hiding following the issuance of an arrest warrant last year.
Early this year, he was convicted anew. This time, the Pasay City Regional Trial Court Branch 188 found him guilty for four counts of online libel under Republic Act No. 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
The court also issued a warrant of arrest against Mejorada.
In a 28-page decision by Presiding Judge Wilhelmina B. Jorge-Wagan dated Jan. 25, 2021, the court found four out of five Facebook posts that were subject of Drilon’s complaint to be libelous. Mejorada was sentenced to two to four years of imprisonment.
“Mejorada did not pause to recalculate his options after his complaint was dismissed, but relentlessly went on public reiterating the same accusations of corruption and defaming the private complainant. Such is a ‘clear indication of his intent to malign,’” the court said.
“This court is not mindful of the intent to air grievances against public officials as well as in the discharge of their official functions. But, such must be ‘an expression of opinion based on established facts, or can be reasonably inferred from the facts,’” the decision read.
“It is beyond cavil the identity of the person defamed in the Facebook posts are manifestly mentioned,” it added.
The subjects of the libelous Facebook posts were some of the projects pushed and supported by the Ilonggo senator in Iloilo City, including the Iloilo Convention Center and a circumferential road, a boulevard, wherein Mejorada accused Drilon of corruption.
In 2015, the Ombudsman dismissed as “baseless and malicious” all the accusations Mejorada hurled against Drilon in connection with the construction of the Iloilo Convention Center.
Aside from his conviction, Mejorada is facing another four cases of online libel in the same court, for which he has a pending warrant of arrest.
In 2020, Mejorada was also found guilty of graft by the Sandiganbayan for an “overpriced laptop purchase” when he was Iloilo provincial administrator. The anti-graft court sentenced Mejorada to a maximum of eight years in prison and perpetually disqualified him from holding public office./PN
