It's been just a little over a month since Oscar Mira caused Alberto August to get charged for cybercrime, and since then the leaks of many sub-10,000 dollar payments to his family members have been exposed. Initially the PM was in denial, but he is now singing a new tune. Jaleeza Roberts analyzed how time can make the difference:
May 30th, the day that changed the life of the Miras, it's the day that Alberto August was charged for cyberbullying. While the Mira family saga is still unfolding, Prime Minister John Briceño's position on it has steadily evolved.
4 days after Mira first made the complaint, the PM upheld Mira's right to do so:
John Briceño, Prime Minister
"I think that Oscar Mira also is a citizen and if he feels that someone is slandering him he has every right to go and make a report and so he made the report which is his constitutional right and then the police picked up Mr. August. I don't know the entire details and he got bail on Sunday. So I think Oscar Mira has every right to be able to make a report against him under the cyberbullying law."
But two weeks later he conceded that the complaint had taken a disproportionate toll:
John Briceño, Prime Minister
"We have to able to learn to accept public criticism and my advice to any aspiring politician is if you want to be able to be a public servant, if you want to serve the people, stay away from social media. We can't undo what has happened, it's for him to be able to learn from his very very very costly and painful experience."
Now yesterday, after the DPP discontinued the case with Alberto August, he came around to a full 180 and said he agreed with her and offered it as a cautionary tale to all politicians:
John Briceño, Prime Minister
"I would like to make it very clear that we need to be careful as politicians. I don't think that the public have a problem if a politician were to sue anybody because they believe they have been aggrieved or they have been slandered, but I think the public has a problem when they would feel that the minister is using the state to go after its enemies. But I just feel strongly that we should not go down that… we should not go down that road, because once you go down that road, then others can then take abuse of it, and we should not allow that."
The Prime Minister's perspective may be evolving, but his first instinct to defend Mira's ill-conceived complaint spoke volumes. It betrays a party unable to self-reflect and self-correct until it's forced to. And for Mira, this newfound wisdom comes too late to save a political future now hanging in the balance. Jaleeza Roberts for 7News.
