General Admission
A cowardly shot at press freedom
By Al S. Mendoza
ORLY Navarro being a hard-hitting broadcaster makes him a hands-down idol of the people.
Instantly, he symbolizes what broadcast journalism should be: A champion of press freedom, a vanguard of both free speech and free movement.
Orly is a hero of all time because he personifies everything that is good in the entire spectrum of journalism under a democracy: A freedom fighter through and through.
In essence, Orly is also like Ninoy Aquino, the President that never was; and, Ermin Garcia Sr., the Sunday PUNCH founder who was gone too soon.
In his greed for power, Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972 and next thing he did, he jailed Ninoy, the only man capable of defeating Marcos in a free election.
After a 7-year unjustified incarceration, Ninoy was freed by Marcos.
Marcos would next allow Ninoy to go to the US for a heart surgery.
With that, Marcos believed he has eliminated his No. 1 political foe as he entertained the illusion Ninoy would stay in the US for good after the operation.
Wrong. With his battle cry, “The Filipino is worth dying for,” Ninoy flew home in 1983.
But, sadly, Ninoy got killed by gunmen assigned purportedly to arrest him upon his arrival at the Manila airport.
The mastermind behind the brutal killing that shook the world has remained unknown, unnamed, to this day even as the convicted gunman had died only a while back due to a freak, if not dubious, road accident while biking at Macapagal Ave. in Pasay City.
In 1986, the seething, three-year anger brought on by Ninoy’s murder culminated into the People Power at Edsa, driving Marcos out of Malacanang and ending Marcos’ almost 20-year, corrupt-ridden rule that also saw thousands of anti-Marcos activists summarily killed and thousands more victims of forced disappearances.
And if Ninoy died by the bullet in his fight for democracy, so did this newspaper’s first editor, Ermin Garcia Sr.
A lone gunman had barged into Ermin Senior’s offices and shot and killed the press freedom fighter point-blank while the brave editor pounded away at his typewriter for the editorial in the paper’s next issue.
Similarly, the bullet that killed Ermin Senior did not, could never, silence the courageous cry for freedom, as it auspiciously took proportions of Ninoy’s martyrdom many, many years later.
I am just so exceedingly glad that Orly survived the shot that was traitorously fired from behind his back.
Like all attacks against journalists around the world, the bullet that almost snuffed the life of Orly was another cowardly shot at press freedom.
If I know Orly, it would only embolden him all the more to champion the cause of free speech.
Thus, when Orly is back in business, let’s double our resolve to throw our support behind a man given to a life of perpetually upholding the power of the spoken word.
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