PRIOR to Rodrigo Duterte’s exit, the Philippines ranked seventh on the list of most dangerous countries for journalists. It was behind troubled countries Somalia, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Mexico.
What separates the Philippines from these troubled countries seems wide, or I could be giving the former president and the present leadership too much of a concession that not all is lost in this country that not a few say is teetering.
The list was from the Global Impunity Index released by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2021, eight months before Duterte lost his power that once was so immense.
In many instances, Duterte was likened to a dictator yet he had kept the thin line that separated a mirage of a vibrant democracy from the extrajudicial killings many had put blame on him.
At about the same time as the Index’s release, the International Criminal Court opened its investigation on the many deaths that marred Duterte’s war on drugs in which police used extrajudicial executions instead of prosecutions as a primary method of punishing criminal suspects.
Duterte’s luck extended, however, with Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s election as his successor with his daughter Sara as Marcos’ vice.
The Marcos name, of course, had seen itself tainted with its history of corruption and the murder and incarceration of activists and opposition figures, serious records that the family is trying hard to correct, distort, or even erase.
Despite all his posturing as an anti-drug crusader, Duterte had called his campaign a failure. He had promised too much.
Duterte had left behind a murky path, however, that recent confiscations of illegal drugs at times involved policemen and/ or relatives of government officials. Some of them are confessed supporters of past and present leaders.
It was under Marcos, however, when yet another murder of a journalist was executed through a hit that allegedly involved inmates at the maximum security compound of the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa.
Percy Lapid, a no-fear political commentator, is likely to be just an addition to the Index’s 13 still unsolved cases of journalists’ murder that put the Philippines closest to the six other countries presently dealing with conflicts and serious humanitarian crises.
At this writing, the Department of Justice has announced the death of an inmate whom it said was likely involved in Lapid’s hit. The narrative is no different from the past deaths of Bilibid inmates found to have been involved in big drug trafficking cases.
That it is a maximum security prison behooves an explanation from the authorities how these activities– drug dealing and contract killing– could still transpire within and even with a supposed no-nonsense government anti-drug campaign that resulted in many deaths outside it.
Yet the Philippine National Police had the temerity to drop by several journalists’ homes– Tokhang style– to gather information on the pretext of providing them with safety when it now seemed they did not even have clue that one or several inmates were closest to the brain of Lapid’s murder as claimed by the supposed suspects themselves.
Fourteen journalists’ deaths unsolved, but those visits’ message was even more chilling.
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