Davao’s Duterte Seeks Arroyo Pardon for Broadcaster Jailed by Nograles

By Marilou M. Aguirre
Davao Today

DAVAO CITY – Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said he is going to seek executive pardon for Alexander “Lex” Adonis, the Davao broadcaster jailed for libel for reporting on the “Burlesque King” scandal involving Duterte’s political rival, first district Congressman Prospero Nograles.

“I’m asking President (Gloria Macapagal) Arroyo to pardon Adonis,” Duterte said in his television program “Gikan sa Masa, para sa Masa” on Sunday, even as he promised to end the heated word war between him and Nograles.

In February this year, Adonis was sentenced to four and a half years in jail for the libel case that Nograles filed against him. Adonis reported on the “Burlesque King” issue in 2001, where, according to Court records, Adonis had alleged Nograles was the man caught running naked in a Manila hotel after the husband of the woman Nograles was allegedly having an affair with caught them inside a hotel room.

The broadcaster was already nine months in jail when Duterte offered to help him at the height of Duterte’s heated exchange with Nograles.

In a television program last month, Duterte spewed diatribes against Nograles, calling him a “liar” who had sent a broadcaster to “jail for telling the truth,” referring to Adonis.

Duterte offered help for Adonis but even before he could do so, Nograles was already reported last week to have arranged Adonis’s medical check-up at the government-owned Davao Medical Center (DMC), as a gesture to help the ailing broadcaster.

The mayor criticized Nograles’s move but refrained from talking about it because, he said, it is “Christmas season.” He also said that a “higher authority” that he respects has requested him to temporarily set aside his issue with Nograles.

Out of respect to the person who relayed the message through Silvestre Bello III, Duterte said he will stop talking about Nograles for a while but his silence will only be “temporary.” (Marilou M. Aguirre/davaotoday. com)