By Herbert Vego
IN his timely column yesterday, colleague Alex P. Vidal mourned the death of Percival “Percy Lapid” Mabasa, “the 196th journalist murdered since democracy was restored in the Philippines in 1986.”
I am sure Alex got the correct number despite the time pressure of the deadline. Gifted with photographic memory, he was writing his column straight from New York City within the few hours counting from around 8 p.m. of Monday (Philippine time) when unidentified riders in tandem shot him while driving his car at Las Piñas City.
Percy had earned popularity here and in Filipino communities abroad because of his nightly radio program “Lapid Fire” on DWBL, which was also beamed live and recorded on YouTube and Facebook. He minced no words in lambasting corrupt government officials.
It has been a long time since I last saw Percy. The last time we met was with the late fellow journalist Danny Fajardo at Century Park Hotel in Manila.
It was another assassinated journalist, Buddy Dacer, who had brought the three of us together during the presidential visit of the late President Fidel Ramos to Bangkok, Thailand for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in 1996.
Percy had been risking life and limb. I remember him condemning the suspects in the murder of media executive Bubby Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in Cavite in November 2000. Without naming names, he alluded to a powerful politician as the mastermind.
While browsing our conversation on FB Messenger, I came across his last message to me: “In case magawi ka sa Manila, kape-kape tayo.”
Like this writer, Percy rooted for Leni Robredo for President.
His brother Roy – a past president of the National Press Club — was also a media man who would often come to Iloilo to see his best friend, our kababayan Sammy Julian (deceased), who was a past president of the Malacañang Press Corps.
We have yet to hear from the police on who could have “sponsored” Percy’s murder. He had lashed out at powerful politicians, including President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and former President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte.
In his last broadcast at 11 p.m. last Friday, Percy criticized blogger Loraine Marie T. Badoy, former spokesperson of the National Taskforce to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), for red-tagging Manila Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Marlo A. Magdoza-Malagar.
Judge Malagar had earlier dismissed the petition for proscription filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and declared that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was not a terrorist organization but a rebel group.
The untimely demise of Percy proves that the culture of impunity continues even until now under a new President. It should prod the International Criminal Court to hurry up on its probe on the “war on drugs” that had wasted the lives of at least 6,000 people, some extra-judicially.
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