NUJP warns vs striking deal with Zaldy Ampatuan

JAKARTA—The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines on Thursday said it was “extremely worried by recent statements emanating from Malacañang regarding the offer of former governor Zaldy Ampatuan to testify as state witness”  in the Maguindanao massacre case.

“These are signals that do not augur well in the search for justice,” Rowena Paraan, NUJP secretary general, said in an e-mailed statement.

Paraan said the NUJP maintains that politics should not stand in the way of justice.

“It is revolting to see the top leadership of the land cozying up to a key suspect in the worst incident of electoral violence in the country and the deadliest single attack on the press in history,” she said.

He said Ampatuan seems “to have struck a harmonious chord with Malacañang by trading revelations of electoral fraud in Maguindanao in 2007 he blames on then president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel.”

Paraan said Malacañang’s biting into the Arroyo issue, which Ampatuan had exposed, “only bolster(ed) suspicions the search for justice for the massacre victims and their relatives is being offered before the altar of political expediency.”

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda had earlier said that Ampatuan’s exposé is worth considering.

Paraan said Malacañang should not lump together the Maguindanao massacre and the alleged vote-rigging issue.

“If we go by this incredible logic, it’s like declaring a ruthless authoritarian ruler of a country in Africa or Latin America human rights hero in the Philippines for helping to clarify for Filipinos how ruthless the strongman rule of Marcos was,” she said.

Paraan said Ampatuan’s revelations can add to “the juicy tales of the intricacies of corruption and power-wielding.”

“But these should not give him an escape from paying for a crime,” she said.

Paraan also said the NUJP will not take the issue sitting down and will continue to be vigilant against attempts to subvert justice for the massacre victims, mostly journalists.

“We owe this to the memory of our 32 colleagues who died in the slaughter and to the more than 100 others whose deaths continue to cry for the justice that government inaction deprives them of,” she said.