On Tiglao smoking out fake letter-senders

Five days before Rigoberto Tiglao came out with his column about fake senders to Inquirer’s Letters section (Inquirer, 4/12/12), I received an e-mail from a certain Monico Atienza ([email protected]) signed as Monico Valdehuesa. In it Atienza/Valdehuesa wrote, “I’m writing a research paper on the impeachment case and found in the Internet your letter to the editor criticizing columnist Tiglao’s thesis re plot to control the Supreme Court. I think it is really a farfetched conspiracy idea, but can you comment on his later claim that next in line to be impeached is Justice Del Castillo?” Seeing no harm, I replied honestly, sent it and thought nothing more of it.

Four days after Tiglao’s article, I got another e-mail from Atienza/Valdehuesa which read, “A search in the Internet, as Tiglao suggested, doesn’t yield any result on you. Are you using a fictitious name? Are you in Malacañang? Can I apply for a similar job?”

From his previous attacks on survey polls to his Holy Week sermon about how “the people” crucified Jesus Christ—Justice Renato Corona, in this case—Tiglao has been systematically discrediting any criticisms directed at Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her allies. This most recent tack, supposedly exposing fake letter-senders and connecting them to President Aquino’s propaganda people, is just predictably pathetic.

Now I know that the innocuous e-mail was actually Tiglao displaying his investigative prowess in rooting out fake letter-senders. Laughable as the effort was, it is really telling how he is prone to generalizations and false assumptions. To him, all critics of Arroyo and her allies are either rabid fanatics or paid hacks. And as expected of him, contrary to his righteous indignation at fake letter-senders, he is himself employing fake identities for his investigation.

Of course, I have no proof that Atienza/Valdehuesa is connected to Tiglao. (A Google search yielded a UP professor and an entrepreneur.) But unlike Corona’s defense team, which accused senator-judges of receiving bribes from Malacañang, I do not have to hide behind lawyer-client privilege to avoid proving my accusations. And unlike Tiglao, whose sources supposedly pointed to P-Noy’s PR team as the fakers, I do not need a columnist’s cloak to get away with groundless statements.

As an ordinary citizen, I only have my right to free speech and my conscience as my guide.

—SOLIMAN DELARIARTE,

[email protected]