Carlos Conde, moderator of PinoyPress, just sent an e-mail alert on the reported shooting of another journalist in General Santos City.
He wrote that Jonathan “Jun” Abayon, 27, a reporter of RGMA Superadyo in that city, is in critical condition after he was shot in the head early this morning, allegedly by a bodyguard of Filipino world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao.
“Two journalists slain in five days; four killed in 2004,” the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines reports in a statement.
Last Saturday, Roger Mariano, a DZJC-Akyson radio anchor in Laoag was shot dead while on his way home. Yesterday, Arnel Manalo, Batangas correspondent of Bulgar tabloid and the radio station DZRH, suffered the same fate.
“The one factor visibly missing in the Philippines is public indignation widespread and compelling enough to make it politically advantageous for the Philippine government to rigorously go after the killers,” writes Philippine Journalism Review editor Luis Teodoro.
The governments of United States and Australia, among other countries, have been criticizing the Philippines for pulling out its troops in Iraq to save Angelo de la Cruz.
The Filipino Youth for Peace issued this open letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard in response to his government’s verbal attacks against us. The group said:
Mr. Howard, you accuse the Filipino people of weakness for the way they responded to the hostage crisis. May we take the liberty to tell you that it is those who see no course for themselves other than to unflinchingly hug the tails of imperial mass murderers who are the real weaklings. It is they who, above all, risk the lives of their countrymen for a war that is not worth the life of even a louse, much less that of an innocent human being.
You need not look to the Philippines to find weakness, Mr. Howard. You need only look in the mirror.
An Iraqi group threatens to kill Filipino hostage if the Philippines would not withdraw its troops from Iraq within 72 hours.
It would not happen if only the government listened to an earlier call by cause-oriented groups.
Among the things one would notice in President Arroyo’s 2004 inaugural address was that she no longer refered to the need for new politics as she did in January 2001 at the EDSA Shrine.
In 2001, she said:
Politics and political power as traditionally practiced and used in the Philippines are among the roots of the social and economic inequities that characterize our national problems. Thus, to achieve true reforms, we need to outgrow our traditional brand of politics based on patronage and personality. Traditional politics is the politics of the status quo. It is a structural part of the problem.
We need to promote a new politics of true party programs and platforms, of an institutional process of dialogue with our citizenry. This new politics is the politics of genuine reform. It is a structural part of the solution.
It was the best thing to say at that time.
Before dawn today, while most of us were still in dreamland, the Philippine Congress formally proclaimed Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the president-elect and Noli de Castro as the vice-president-elect.
After being proclaimed, Arroyo called for unity: “This is the time for forgiveness and letting-go-of-the-past,” she said.
But how could she call on the people to forgive and forget when doubts on the credibility of the recent elections that made her remain in power persist?
Another media practitioner was killed Thursday last week. The victim was Radyo Natin broadcaster Eliseo “Ely” Binoya of General Santos City.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJP), strongly condemned the killing. “Perhaps because the perpetrators have been able to get away with it, the attacks against journalists continue,” it said in a statement.
NUJP also listed a series of attacks on journalists this year: