Tupas files cyber libel charges vs Bello
Former Davao City Information officer Jefry Tupas on Monday filed cyber libel charges against vice-presidential candidate Walden Bello in Davao City over his accusation that she’s a drug dealer.
“Everything that Mr. Walden Bello has said about me, and against me, (was) false, unfair, malicious, and downright unacceptable — causing me emotional distress as they irreparably damaged my name, my reputation, my future,” Tupas said in a statement.
Tupas decried the online attacks she has been receiving following Bello’s defamatory allegations against her.
“Mr. Walden Bello is no ordinary citizen. He is a book writer. He is an activist — a human rights activist. He is a professor and a scholar whose international academic circle and civil-society network and experience are vast. He is aspiring to become the next Vice President of the Philippines,” she said.
“Given that — the magnitude of the consequence, the injury left by the offensives unleashed by Mr. Walden Bello on me, towards me, is unimaginable,” she added.
The complaint stemmed from a virtual press conference on 1 March where Bello brought up Tupas’ alleged involvement in a drug raid in Davao de Oro in November last year.
“If Davao City is so ‘multi-awarded’, why is that... Mayor Sara Duterte’s Press Information Officer Jefry Tupas was nabbed at a beach party where she and her friends were snorting P1.5 million worth of drugs on 6 November 2021?
That she did not know she was sheltering a drug dealer is not credible,” Bello had said.
Bello was referring to the incident at a beach resort in Mabini town where Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency officers seized some P1.5 million worth of suspected high-grade party drugs and other illegal substances.
While Tupas was not among the arrested, she admitted to having attended the party but stressed that she left the venue one hour before the raid.
Due to her alleged involvement, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio announced that Tupas had been terminated from the Davao City Hall on the same day that she signified her resignation.
Meanwhile, for Bello, the charges filed by Tupas were “clearly a politically-motivated move” and a form of harassment.
“Was Tupas instructed by Sara Duterte to take away attention from her refusal to participate in the vice-presidential debate?” he asked.
“It aims to inconvenience us in legal bureaucracy while failing to address the concerns we’ve raised about the mayor’s tainted record in Davao,” he added.