The entire community of journalists in Misamis Occidental expresses our outrage over the gruesome fate suffered by our colleagues who were reportedly part of a group of some 50 people massacred in Maguindanao on Monday, November 23, 2009.
Some 20 of our colleagues were merely covering what should have been the filing of a certificate of candidacy of an aspirant for Maguindanao governor. It was just horrible that in the course of doing their work, they also become secondary targets, if not collateral damage, in the clash of people gunning for control of political power.
Such a highly abominable act of slaughtering scores of innocent people should be utterly condemned in the strongest sense. It is a conduct not befitting civilized society.
Suffrage is a Constitutionally-guaranteed right of everyone that provides the underpinnings of elections as a democratic exercise. Press freedom, which is equally sanctioned by the Constitution, guarantees unhampered chronicling of the travails of this political activity through the news media.
But last Monday’s Maguindanao carnage showed how brute force was employed to replace civilized and dynamic interaction in the political and social communication platforms in order to maintain hegemonic dominance over local fiefdoms. No doubt, this practice is further undermining the state of democracy which is still fragile throughout the country, and a seeming failure in Maguindanao.
By the sheer brutality of the incident, we will forever consider this date a day of infamy for Philippine democracy.
We demand justice and full responsibility by the perpetrators no matter who they are. We ask the government to do a no-nonsense probe into the incident and bring those responsible before the bar of justice.
(SGD) RYAN D. ROSAURO
Chair, NUJP-Ozamiz City Chapter
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