CAMARINES Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte yesterday denied he was behind the alleged move of the Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges (CSPC) to censor a pre-election survey published last Friday by The Spark, the school’s student paper.
The publication showed he was trailing behind Bong Rodriguez, a former regional campaign manager of former Vice President Leni Robredo who is the lawmaker’s rival in the gubernatorial race.
“It seems far-fetched for me to take any action, as claimed by certain groups, that would undermine press freedom or campus journalism, given that this runs counter to my longtime advocacy for safeguarding press freedom and advancing the welfare of journalists and other members of the media,” he said in a statement.
Villafuerte said he has long been calling on the Senate to pass his House-approved measure that seeks to protect and promote the welfare of journalists and other media members by granting them their deserved economic benefits and creating an environment more conducive to their safe, productive and free work.
House Bill (HB) No. 454, which the House passed in November 2022, aims to ensure benefits such as security of tenure, hazard pay, night shift differential pay and overtime pay in recognition of the perils and hazards that media persons are exposed to daily in the course of their delicate jobs of providing needed information to the public.
Paul Luna, the paper’s editor-in-chief, earlier said the student paper’s staff was summoned by their administration after Villafuerte, in a social media post, called the report “fake news.”
He said University President Amado Oliva, Jr. had repeatedly told him that he should delete the post about The Spark’s gubernatorial survey since the election season is getting intense and “that we should be careful about what we post relative to them.”
The results posted on The Spark’s Facebook page last week showed Rodriguez received 214 votes or 43 percent of the respondents, while Villafuerte had 150 votes or 30.1 percent.
“There is a fake survey being spread around, allegedly over 500 [students were surveyed] from Camarines Sur Polytechnic University in Nabua, when the enrolled students are over 14,000,” Villafuerte said on Facebook.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) earlier slammed what it called the “vulgar display of power and patronage” by Villafuerte and urged colleagues in the media in the province and the whole Bicol region “to stand with the campus press.”
It said that while Villafuerte is free to disagree with the results of the mock elections, “posting a staffer’s name and photo, knowing this makes them a target for his supporters, is beyond the pale.”
“In keeping with my advocacy for upholding press freedom and the independence of campus journalism, I recognize the right of student publications to report on developments, including the outcome of local surveys that are conducted with the proper methodology,” Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte said he has never contacted anybody in the CSPC administration to take down the report of The Spark.
“The protesters are barking up the tree and should ask those running The Spark why they took down the report. Or perhaps those who decided to do so did it on their own volition because they belatedly found something was not right about the report or the poll,” he said.
Villafuerte said that while he acknowledges the rights of professional and campus journalists, “I also have the right to question certain reportage or the presentation of news, such as on the outcome of locally done opinion polling, and I certainly hope that they would similarly recognize my right to respond to such reports, particularly those that concern me and my family.”
He said he was “simply wondering why certain quarters have tried to blow this issue out of proportion by branding as an attack on press freedom my right to express concern over the authenticity of the survey.”
“What I have legitimately raised, though, in response to the report on the survey results is my concern about the accuracy or veracity of the methodology used in the polling, and my fear that the students behind this undertaking—young and guileless as they are—could have unwittingly been used by, or fallen prey, to certain quarters with insidious political agendas in the May midterm elections,” the lawmaker said.
Villafuerte questioned the NUJP, which he said joined the “fray for whatever interest they had in mind,” where it was during the two incidents of media assaults in Camarines Sur.
“I heard nary a squeak from them when volunteer reporter Miguel ‘Mike’ Belen survived a gun attack by two unidentified assailants riding in tandem in July 2010, and the killing of DWEB radio commentator Romeo Olea in June 2011,” he said.
