‘Some don’t fit but Doleng is Gwen’
Does “Doleng” refer to Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia?
Apparently so, said Glen Baricuatro, former head of the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office.
“I believe that the Doleng referred to in Lastimosa’s column is Gwen,” Baricuatro told the court.
Baricuatro was presented last Friday by the governor’s camp during the hearing on the libel case filed against tri-media personality Leo Lastimosa.
Baricuatro said he thought of the governor when he read Lastimosa’s column titled “Si Doleng Kawatan,” which was published at the Freeman last June 29, 2007.
On cross-examination, Baricuatro, however, said some of the descriptions of “Doleng” don’t fit the governor.
Lastimosa’s lawyer Celso Espinosa asked Baricuatro if Garcia had ever been a “fish-monger and a barangay captain.”
Baricuatro answered, “No as far as I know.”
The prosecution presented Baricuatro to prove that someone was able to identify the governor as “Doleng.”
One of the elements of libel is the identification of the person being defamed.
In 2007, Garcia complained that the name “Doleng” referred to her and charged Lastimosa for libel.
The column, one of several critical pieces about the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) built in 2007, described Doleng as a “thief, vindicative, ill-tempered, foul-mouthed and cruel.”
The prosecution will present as witnesses Governor Garcia and Sun-Star Cebu’s Pachico Seares.
Lastimosa was supposed to meet with the governor at the Philippine Mediation Center last month but Garcia failed to attend the mediation proceedings thrice.
