From ‘Hail Mary’ to hell on the streets for newsmen

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – The cover of TIME Magazine’s March 21 edition is deceptively mild. I picked it up in Singapore’s Changi airport on my way here, changing planes there for the 26-minute onward flight to Malaysia’s Sepang international airport.

It is easy to fly from Singapore to Sepang – but from that modern, super-streamlined airport, one of former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s impressive infrastructure erections, to downtown Kuala Lumpur is 90 kilometers!

In sum, it takes you 45 minutes by car, minus traffic, to simply drive from airport to hotel. However, Mahathir didn’t forget to put up a high-speed train which whisks you from Sepang to K.L. in just over half an hour – he copied this idea usefully from the Hong Kong airport set-up. The Malaysians also have a smooth, three-lane highway, each way, where vehicles can zip long without a pothole or bump.

What about us? When we get NAIA-3 going by July, will we be able to whisk arriving passengers to Makati and downtown Manila as painlessly? No way. Just outside the airport is squattersville, and other smelly roadways and byways. This simply is no incentive for would-be investors or holiday-intent tourists. It’s time we got a Skyway from the airport under construction.

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Coming back to the latest issue of TIME which I thought would put me into the mood for Semana Santa, headlined "HAIL MARY", and subheaded "Christians of all Denominations are Finding their own reasons to venerate the Mother of Jesus," I was soon to be disappointed.

On page 22 I found a candid article about how journalists are being murdered in our country. The piece, entitled "WRITE AND WRONG," by Liam Fitzpatrick, is straight to the painful point. Its subhead says: "Outside of Iraq, the Philippines is the world’s most dangerous place for journalists, who find themselves beset by poverty, corruption and murder. Figuring out who’s to blame is the hardest part of all."

The well-written exposé begins with the assassination of Allan Dizon, a photojournalist of our sister-newspaper in Cebu, The Freeman. Fitzpatrick cites as one of the several reasons for poor Dizon’s unpopularity his "mischievous sense of humor." One example noted was this: "The chief of police was seen riding piggyback on a citizen to cross a flooded street, and Allan got that picture." Ruth Mercado, an editor at Freeman is quoted as saying, "We put it on Page One. The police were so mad, but it’s not everyday you catch that very moment. As a photojournalist he had an eye for a good shot. Perhaps that wasn’t why Dizon got shot – fatally . . . "he took three bullets from a passing motorcyclist while standing outside a mobile-phone shop."

TIME points out that more than 60 of our journalists have been killed since 1986 ("the year the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was ousted and a free press restored").

The magazine further reports that "fledgling reporters are routinely given a booklet titled Staying Alive, published by a non-profit group called the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists."

The author does not paint journalists as universally men of virtue. He adds that, "with $60 a month considered a generous wage for a fresh, up-country reporter, the temptation to leverage one’s press card is considerable."

". . . Sometimes, of course, genuinely crusading journalists do get murdered. In 2002, for example, the highly regarded editor of the Zamboanga Scribe. Edgar Damalerio, was gunned down in the street. Famous for writing exposés of local malfeasance, Damalerio had also taken the extraordinary step of personally filing cases against allegedly crooked officials. . . "

The victim also worked for a Zamboanga radio station. The same Zamboanga station, by the way, also had a well-known announcer, also noted for his brave exposés. One day, two men barged into his booth, one to stand guard at the door, the other to poke a pistol at him and shoot him down just as he was signing off his program. His murder was heard "on the air," literally, with everybody listening at their radio sets.

To date, despite our editorials in this newspaper, and two speeches I myself delivered in Zamboanga City, asking for their resolution, neither crime has been "solved," nor any suspects identified. Were the killers known to the cops – or were they even policemen?

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Before I left for the airport on this trip, I was the guest speaker at a Rotary District Convention in the EDSA Plaza Hotel – with more than 800 delegates in attendance.

I had told them that before he assumed his top position, Philippine National Police Director General Art Lomibao had assured me that one of his first priorities would be to "get" the killers of journalists, no matter who they might be, or how powerful their connections might be. I pledged we will hold him to that promise.

General Lomibao will be our guest this morning at the Tuesday Club. Which is why I’m rushing home from Kuala Lumpur, on a flight scheduled to arrive last night. Hasta pronto, Baby.

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Here in Kuala Lumpur, there’s still some crime admittedly. A woman was shot and killed in a shopping mall in Batu, not far away.

There are, in the kempongs and outside villages, break-ins and robberies.

But the city itself is safe. You can walk around unbothered, to the Night Market, through Chinatown – you name it. Sunday night we had a delicious Nonya-type dinner in a charming eatery on Jalan Balai Polis (Police Station Road – how safe can yet get?), which was called the "Old China Café." My hotel driver, Stephen – a former Sri Lankan – had recommended it.

Everywhere you go, you see gweilo, putihs, ex-pats galore. Malaysia has cleverly repositioned itself as a safe haven for investment, with many companies coming it – with their staffs – to take advantage of incentives like inexpensive living conditions, lower hotel rates, safety and security. Sepang airport, which used to have few inbound flights daily, is today a beehive of activity.

Malaysia, through charming TV advertising, has created for itself an image as "Truly Asia." Not exactly true, but gee whiz, K.L. is neat, the environment is full of greenery and trees, and you’ve got all the comforts at a reasonable price.

That, when all is said and done, is what the foreign visitor, investor, tourist – or local citizen – looks for in everyday life. Our politicians and leaders, who travel so much, don’t seem to learn this inexorable fact from their junkets and peregrinations.