One senator’s issue has become an institutional concern. Two weeks ago, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano said that the Senate ethics committee he chairs was formulating the rules for hearing some six plagiarism cases on its agenda, including one against his sister, Sen. Pia Cayetano. There has been no additional update.
Media reporting on the plagiarism issue was incomplete and distorted, Senate Majority Leader Tito Sotto cried at the Kapihan sa Manila at the Diamond Hotel on Monday.
It’s almost as amusing as an episode of “Iskul Bukol.” Tito Sotto’s camp now suggests that John F. Kennedy himself took liberties with other people’s lines and claimed them as his own. Specifically, that he wasn’t the originator of “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” it was his teacher.
With all due respect, I honestly believe those 30 or so complainants who sued Sen. Tito Sotto III for plagiarism are making a mountain out of a molehill.
The rule is imperative. Cheating, which includes but is not limited to plagiarism, will automatically result in a flaming grade of 5.0 for the term. This, I specifically pointed out as a welcoming reminder to my second year engineering students in technical writing at the beginning of the semester.
That was quite a mouthful Manny Pangilinan spat out last week. “Kung ako lang,” he was quoted as saying, “I’d pack up and go back to Hong Kong. Ang gulo-gulo n’yo.” He said that after Antonio Trillanes blind-sided him, depicting him as whipping up anti-China sentiment in this country to protect his business interests. [...]
Much has been said about Sen. Vicente Sotto III’s alleged plagiarism. From mainstream media to blogs and social media sites, this has been discussed ad nauseam. One would think that the debate on the Reproductive Health bill had been reduced to this singular issue.
I can understand former Associate Justice Florentino Feliciano’s doting defense of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno in his letter to this paper (Inquirer, 9/8/12). However, facts should prevail over one’s fondness for a protégé.
It’s no small irony that the one person who has pushed the anti-Reproductive Health camp to the sea is not its worst enemy but its self-proclaimed champion. Who is Tito Sotto. He took to the floor last week to deliver the final nail on the coffin. And did—to his own. And to his cause along with it.
Tito Sotto is a victim, or so Tito Sotto claims. He believes he is the focus of a concerted effort by the heavily funded supporters of the Reproductive Health bill, all of whom are desperate to demonize him and weaken his resolve. He suspects he is the first senator to be made victim of cyberbullying. He has been insulted, criticized and threatened with lawsuits. His history has been exploited. It is a hatchet job, he says, a demolition job.
It’s gotten a lot more hilarious. Hector Villacorta, Tito Sotto’s chief of staff, says plagiarism is no big deal, the Senate does it all the time. That is so particularly with old bills that were not passed into law: Senators just repackage them and put them out as their own bills. “Copying is a common practice. Why do you need to think of a brand-new measure when a good one that was not enacted already exists? Why reinvent the wheel?”
I write to raise my concern about the news article titled “Oh no, another case of plagiarism” (Inquirer, 8/21/12), extensively quoting from a blog that raised plagiarism charges against me.
