Percival Mabasa had just finished his news analysis radio show, “Lapid Fire.” The family: “His brave and witty comments about her stood out amid the barrage of misinformation, both on the radio and on social media.” In his programs he was not afraid to criticize the historical distortions of the Martial Law years, which Duterte and Marcos Jr. were propagandizing.
Manila () – Another journalist, the second in the first hundred days of the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Jr, was assassinated on Monday night in Las Piñas, one of the municipalities that make up Metro Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Percival Mabasa, better known by his adopted name Percy Lapid, was shot dead by two as yet unidentified individuals. Mabasa had just finished his talk show “Lapid Fire,” broadcast on DWBL 1242.
As the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines recalled, the radio host is the 197th media operator to have been the victim of a violent death since the “flower and rosary revolution” that in February 1986 decreed the end of the Marcos dictatorship. This confirms the statistics, including that of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, which in 2021 placed the Philippines in seventh place in the ranking of countries with murders of journalists that went unpunished.
Police are carrying out preliminary investigations and are committed to providing comprehensive and timely information on the crime. For their part, the family of the assassinated journalist expressed their pain but also their commitment not to let his death go unpunished: “We strongly condemn this deplorable crime that has been committed not only against Percy, his family and his profession, but also against our country, his beloved Philippines, and against the truth,” said Brother Roy Mabasa, also a longtime journalist. Roy recalled the figure of his brother as a person “much loved by many people and highly respected by his colleagues, both those who shared his ideas and those who disagreed with him”, adding that “his brave and sharp comments stood out from the barrage of false information, both on the radio and on social media”.
The reactions of the political world, especially the opposition, were also immediate. The head of the Senate Public Information and Media Commission, Robin Padilla, called for the culprits to be arrested without delay, and Leni Robredo -former vice president of the previous government of Rodrigo Duterte and one of the most prominent figures of the parliamentary opposition – exhorted the authorities not to fail in their duty of justice. Senator Risa Hontiveros took a more forceful stance, speaking of a “brazen attack on press freedom, demonstrating the intrinsic power of speech and freedom of expression.” Human rights activist Neri Colmenares, for her part, described Lapid as a dissident who “spoke out against fake news, brave enough to defy the risk of being labeled a communist and unafraid to denounce historical distortions about Martial Law”. This is a reference to the revision of the Marcos era and the figure of the former dictator who died in exile in 1989, which Duterte began and now continues with the presidency of his son Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
