[Rappler’s Best] When a fee acts ‘like a bull’

‘The harm that the SEC order induced our enterprise, our newsroom, our desires, and our everydays is immeasurable’

You could have heard the very best information that we’ve had in eight years: the Court docket of Appeals (CA) granting Rappler’s enchantment to nullify an “unlawful” shutdown order that the Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) issued towards us on January 11, 2018, on the peak of the Duterte administration’s assaults towards Rappler and its critics. 

You’d be forgiven, although, for maybe getting a bit confused about it. To this present day, I nonetheless get to fulfill individuals who assume we’ve already closed store. Others assume we’d truly already gained this case, which is why, they assume, they see us on-line. 

We did enchantment the SEC’s kill order earlier than the CA; this gave us respiration house and stopped the fee from totally implementing it. Not that it didn’t strive. Actually, the SEC “ignored” the court docket’s first remand order to overview the case in an inexpensive method, a present of “willful defiance that exceeds even the edge of grave abuse of discretion.” The CA’s phrases, not mine.

We did get up each morning fearing we might lose every little thing. We juggled various plans from A to Z — whilst we knew that none of them might ever mirror what we now have constructed with our sweat and tears. We held shutdown drills that didn’t spare the brand new hires and wide-eyed recent grads.

However as we instructed you then in a letter: “If you stand and battle for what is correct, there isn’t a useless finish, solely obstacles that may solely make us stronger.”

The harm that the SEC order induced our enterprise, our newsroom, our desires, and our everydays is immeasurable. This current court docket verdict helps heal these deep wounds, however the scars are nonetheless too uncooked. They’re painful reminders of what — and who — we misplaced throughout these traumatic years. 

What can we do as a subsequent step on this arduous highway to justice? Recognize your ideas on this. 

Enable me, please, to stroll you thru what occurred another time. (Right here’s a timeline.)

Two weeks after the January 2018 SEC order, we went to the CA for reduction, mentioning that the fee singled us out over a monetary instrument that different media firms had been allowed to make use of, and lower brief its processes merely to pin us down. (A must-read: Why Rappler gained its case vs Duterte-time SEC shutdown order)

• Headed then by chairperson Teresita Herbosa, the SEC performed a lightning probe into Rappler, making a particular investigative panel in July 2017 after which, 4 weeks after, already issuing a present trigger order that compelled us to clarify why we shouldn’t be held answerable for violating the Structure. 
• Greater than 4 months later, in January 2018, the fee, concluding that we violated the regulation on the ban on overseas possession of media, revoked our license. 
• The shutdown order got here as quick because the curses that emanated from the foul mouth of then-president Rodrigo Duterte who, in his July 2017 State of the Nation Handle (notice how his and SEC’s timing synced), falsely claimed that Rappler was “totally owned by People.”
• Like clockwork, the Bureau of Inside Income filed tax evasion complaints towards Rappler (which the courts have all dismissed); the Nationwide Bureau of Investigation initiated a cyber libel criticism towards Maria Ressa, Rappler’s administrators, and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. (the case has been elevated to the Supreme Court docket en banc); Duterte banned Rappler’s Pia Ranada and all Rappler employees from getting into Malacañang and protecting him; and different types of harassment. 

A month after the revocation order, Omidyar, to “get rid of” the premise for the SEC order and show that its funding was made in good religion, donated its shares to Rappler’s managers.

Omidyar’s donation might have cured the issue, stated the CA in a choice penned by its twelfth Division in July 2018. In addition to, the court docket added, the SEC has given different firms ample time to right objectionable parts of their incorporation papers and Rappler must be no exemption. 

The court docket thus remanded the case to the SEC to “reevaluate” the scenario, given Omidyar’s donation and what it implied was the best of Rappler to a corrective interval.

• In February 2021, the SEC reaffirmed its earlier closure order — with out asking Rappler to present its aspect. It merely tossed again to the CA its stand that Omidyar’s donation didn’t remedy the issue. 
• We appealed the choice with the SEC. The commissioners dragged their ft till the final two days of the Duterte administration, once they reiterated their closure order towards Rappler, posting it on the SEC web site. 
• This act meant that any particular person or firm transacting with Rappler merely needed to examine the SEC to see that… we now have supposedly ceased to exist.
• The fee then requested Pasig metropolis corridor to execute the closure order and padlock the newsroom — however Pasig pushed again.  

Merely put, the SEC — regardless of the case nonetheless pending with the CA — wished to point out the world that its choice, after “reevaluating” the case itself as ordered by the court docket, was remaining. 

The gall of this fee, wrote Affiliate Justice Emily San Gaspar-Gito of the CA’s Particular seventh Division in her scathing ponencia on July 23, 2024, which was concurred with by Affiliate Justices Ramon Cruz and Raymond Joseph Javier.

The CA castigated the SEC for not conducting an honest-to-goodness reinvestigation of the case, for insisting it carried the ultimate phrase on it, and for adopting a “draconian” interpretation of what it deemed was Rappler’s violation. 

• The SEC en banc didn’t simply fail to “perceive the CA twelfth Division ruling [in 2018]” that ordered a reevaluation of the Rappler case, it additionally “show(ed) willful defiance that exceeds even the edge of grave abuse of discretion.” 
• The SEC en banc “evaluated the authorized impact of Omidyar’s donation with out even bothering to take a look at the donation itself” and “actively prevented giving petitioners the chance to current [evidence].”
• “Counting on its interpretation of the phrase ‘consider,’ the SEC en banc then proceeded to resolve the difficulty in isolation, with out permitting petitioners to submit proof or take part within the so-called ‘analysis.’” 

“Like a bull seeing crimson, the SEC en banc plowed by regulation and jurisprudence to succeed in its mark — the demise of Rappler. The SEC en banc violated the hierarchy of courts and ignored process. These actions haven’t any place in a democratic state.” 

How candy, this win. 

Enable us to relish it as we await the decision on two remaining instances: the cyber libel conviction of Maria Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr., which is now with the Supreme Court docket en banc, and the anti-dummy case filed towards Maria, myself, and different 2016 Rappler Board administrators at a Pasig court docket — the supposed deserves of that are rooted within the SEC order that has been junked by the CA.

For holding the road with us, thanks from the underside of our hearts.

– Rappler.com