SENATE President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto is giving a P100,000 ‘seed capital’ to start a cash reward campaign for the informant who can lead authorities to the killers of former newspaper correspondent Melinda Magsino.
“I am donating P100,000 to a reward pool, which I urge the government to create, for any information that will lead to the arrest of Mei’s murderers,” Recto said on Wednesday.
While urging law enforcers to bring her killers to justice immediately, Recto called on the government to end the impunity by which journalists are killed.
He pointed out that another unsolved murder involving a member of the media emboldens the killing of more.
He said those behind the murder should be held accountable and punished.
“This should not be in the line of cases of journalists who were killed for exposing the truth, but were not given justice,” said Recto.
As a member of the press, he said, Magsino practiced her craft with guts and grit, her prose and insight as sharp as balisong, which she used to peel the falsehoods which hid the truth, and prick the conscience of the people and the ego of the powerful.
Though at the time of her death she was not affiliated with a media organization, this did not prevent her from making social commentaries, and her words sparked the changes she wanted to see in the province she truly loved, Recto said.
“She died with her boots on, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable to the end, and it was her desire to search for and speak out the truth which led her enemies to cowardly censor her forever,” Recto said.