A Letter Against Corporate Tyranny

Anton M. Bonifacio writes:

Dear Members of the Blogging Community:

Online free speech is in danger.

We are a group of parents who formed the Parents Enabling Parents (PEP) Coalition and set up a website which included a Bloggers Forum section to enable parents and other interested members of the blogging community to post online their personal sentiments/opinions/views related to the Pacific Plans Inc. planholders fiasco.

Last October 25, 2005, we were sued for libel by Malayan Insurance Company -- part of the Yuchengco Group of Companies, one of the largest conglomerates in the country -- and the Yuchengco family (in particular, Amb. Alfonso Yuchengco and Helen Yuchengco-Dee) primarily because of the opinions that were found in a sympathetic blog (pacificnoplan.blogspot.com), Yahoo! Groups (no2pep2010@yahoogroups.com) and our own Bloggers Forum section in our website (www.pepcoalition.com). The pacificnoplan.blogspot and no2pep2010@yahoogroups.com are not owned nor managed by the PEP Coalition.. The only forum we, as a coalition, provide is in the pepcoaliion.com website.

It's a classic case of David and Goliath. The Internet was the last resort of the planholders to voice their concerns and yet, the use of this medium is now being used against them. The Complaint-Affidavit, a copy of which is attached here, was received by a PEP Coalition member through ordinary mail last November 8.

We are just a group of parents struggling together to enjoin a giant corporation to honor their contractual obligations to us when we bought our education plans for our children. We can barely scrounge for the money to pay for the tuition fees of our children which should have been paid by PPI, much less have the money to pay for airtime and newspaper ads to air our plight. The only recourse we have to keep in touch with one another and express our concerns is through the internet, the cheapest medium of communication.

For providing an avenue for planholders and others to express their views, sentiments and opinions on this fiasco, we are now being sued!

Whatever will be the outcome of this suit can set a precedent for media, which has also begun to use blogs as an alternative medium of journalism, and for all of us in the blogging community. Please blog about this matter in your respective fora.

Alone, we are but another hyperlink on the Internet; but together, we can be heard.

Thanks.