ANTICORRUPTION CRUSADER
Broadcast journalist murdered in Davao
5th mediaman slain in ’07
By Dennis Jay Santos
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:55:00 12/25/2007
DAVAO CITY -- A radio broadcaster who had denounced alleged corruption in the building of the “People’s Park” in this city and government malfeasance will not be spending Christmas Tuesday with his four children.
An assassin riding tandem on a motorcycle with an accomplice gunned down Ferdie Lintuan at 9:30 a.m. Monday as the 51-year-old journalist was driving his Volkswagen, police said.
Known to his colleagues as “Batman” or Batang Mandaya, Lintuan had just finished his morning broadcast at radio dxGO and had stopped at an intersection when the motorcycle sidled up and two shots from a .45 cal. pistol rang out.
Lintuan was hit in the head and chest. A widower, he lost his wife to cancer some years ago.
He was the fifth journalist to be killed in the country this year. He was the 54th media member to be murdered under the Arroyo administration, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).
Two other radiomen on the car with Lintuan were unhurt, including one who said he survived by playing dead.
“He was the only target,” Davao City Rep. Prospero Nograles, a friend of the murdered broadcaster, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.
Nograles, of the ruling Lakas-CMD party, said Lintuan “could (have been killed by the) Davao Death Squad and the usual suspects.” He refused to identify the “usual suspects.” The so-called death squad is a vigilante group.
Raul Antopuesto, manager of dxGO, which is owned and operated by Manila Broadcasting Co., said the attack on Lintuan was “definitely job-related.”
He said that in the past week, Lintuan had been taking shots at the recently opened “People’s Park,” a project of the city government.
‘A crocodile park’
“He called it corrupt or the crocodile park,” Antopuesto said, quoting what Lintuan had said in his radio commentaries.
Antopuesto said Lintuan, in his program Monday, discussed issues like the ban on aerial spraying on banana plantations in the city and the People’s Park.
Lintuan claimed the trees planted in the park were overpriced.
One of Lintuan’s companions, Edgar Banzon, said he heard two gunshots. He said they were on an intersection on their way to the main highway when the killing happened.
The other companion, Lucio Ceniza, said he feigned being shot while the assailant was firing at their vehicle.
“Had I not pretended that I was also hit, maybe the gunman would also have shot me,” Ceniza said.
“This government will not allow this criminal act to go unpunished,” Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza said.
Lintuan’s 4 children
Dureza said he was coordinating with Davao media groups to provide assistance to the family of Lintuan, a widower taking care of four school-aged children.
Dureza said Lintuan was also a “survivor” many years ago of a communist rebel attack on a radio station that killed six people.
Senior Supt. Jaime Morente, city police chief, said “Task Force Batman” had been created to track down the killer.
Rommel Rebollido, a member of the NUJP national directorate, said it was very disheartening that the murder took place a day before Christmas when the victim was supposed to celebrate it with his four children.
‘Batman is dead’
Nograles said Lintuan “was a very close friend since 1984 and I think he was really perceived as identified with me.”
Minutes after Lintuan was killed, Nograles was sending out text messages to reporters in Metro Manila, saying: “Batman was ambushed with two other media men.... He is dead on the spot.”
Nograles would not name his “usual suspects.”
“Too early to tell who did it. Let’s just pressure local and national intelligence groups and law agencies to come up with their theories fast,” he said.
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had ordered the Philippine National Police to “immediately bring the perpetrators to justice.”
The NUJP Davao chapter said killing of Lintuan “only shows how barbaric this society has become and how dangerous it is for members of the Fourth Estate to do their duties in this part of the globe.”
“This is doubly sorrowful for the media community here considering that Batman was murdered on the eve of Christmas Day that while other people are celebrating the Nativity. His family will lose its only breadwinner as he already lost his wife to cancer a few years ago.”
The NUJP Davao paid tribute to Lintuan as a broadcaster “known for his stinging commentaries against erring politicians, backing this up with good research and evidence.”
The National Press Club (NPC) urged law enforcement agencies “not to be cowed by whoever are behind these most despicable acts and to get to the bottom of these murders.”
Death roll
Other media members killed this year were:
• Vicente Sumalpong, a senior reporter for Radyo ng Bayan, gunned down in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, on June 25.
• Hernani Pastolero, editor of the Lightning Courier, shot dead in front of his house in Shariff Kabunsuan on Feb. 19.
• Carmelo Palacios, reporter of Radyo ng Bayan, found dead in Sta. Rosa, Nueva Ecija, on April 18.
• Dodie Nuñez, a contributor to publication Katapat Cavite, killed on May 21 in Cavite. With reports from Joselle Badilla and Aquiles Zonio, Inquirer Mindanao; Michael Lim Ubac and Christine O. Avendaño in Manila, and Kate Pedroso, Inquirer Research
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