BUTUAN CITY?Another hard-hitting radio commentator was shot and killed by a lone gunman in Bayugan, Agusan del Sur, on Saturday, police said.

Jonathan Fetalvero, a block-timer for dxFM Friendster, was the sixth media practitioner to have been killed in the country since January and the 67th since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed office in 2001.

Although reports reaching police identified Fetalvero as a ?kagawad? or council member of Barangay Poblacion, he was popular in the town for his fierce commentaries and tirades against wrongdoings in his community and in the local government.

Fetalvero ?is well-known in Bayugan for his daily morning commentaries,? said PO2 Allan Cunso, who is investigating the attack.

The broadcaster was drinking inside a restaurant in the town proper when a man wearing a bonnet shot him in the head with a .45 cal. pistol at around 7 p.m., Cunso told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The killer fled on a motorcycle, he added.

Police clueless

?We are still determining the motive for the killing, whether it was related to his work as barangay councilor or work in the media because he was not reported as a media practitioner,? said Senior Supt. Nestor Fajura, spokesperson of the regional police.
A police source, however, said Fetalvero was embroiled in a dispute over a controversial construction project in his barangay.

He was said to be aspiring for a seat in the municipal council in next year?s elections.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists earlier this year said the Philippines was among several countries where media workers were murdered with impunity.

A total of 129 Filipino journalists have been killed since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown by a military-backed people?s uprising in 1986.

Other fatalities

This year, five other journalists, two of them working in radio stations, have been killed.

On Jan. 22, Badrodin Abbas, 38, a Muslim peace worker and radio commentator of dxCM-Radyo Ukay, was shot in the head by two motorcycle-riding persons as he drove his small van in Cotabato City. He died immediately.

Another radio broadcaster, Ernie Rollin, 52, was shot dead by two masked men on his way to his daily talk program on radio dxSY-AM in Misamis Occidental on Feb. 23.

Witnesses said Rollin had just dropped off his partner, Ligaya, at a waiting shed when two motorcycle-riding men in bonnets appeared and attacked him.

The victim also did weekend commentaries and handled programming at dxRA-FM in Oroquieta City.

On June 3, tabloid reporter Jojo Trajano was killed in a shootout while covering a drug raid in Taytay town, Rizal province.

On June 9, Crispin Perez, 66, was stabbed several times at his house in Occidental Mindoro, after finishing his radio program ?Sa Totoo Lang? over dwDO Heart FM.

Perez, who was also a former vice governor of the province, was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

On June 12, Antonio Castillo, 45, a tabloid correspondent of Dimasalang, Masbate, was driving his motorcycle along the highway in Uson town when he was shot by two men who were also on a Honda motorcycle without license plates. He died at the hospital. With reports from Inquirer Research and Agence France-Presse