A hard-hitting Filipino journalist and radio commentator, Percy “Lapid”Mabasa, was recently gunned down (October 3, 2022) by a hired killer riding in tandem with someone in a motorcycle, as Percy was about to enter the gate of the subdivision where he lived. With CCTV around and dashcam on the victim’s vehicle, the gunman’s identity was caught on camera and prominently flashed on TV and other media platforms. A cash bounty amounting to Php6.5 million in total (from volunteer sources) was publicly announced by the government’s Department of the Interior and Local Government in an effort to solve this crime. This prominent media attention reportedly “scared” the hired gunman, believing that whoever hired him would eliminate him soon, so he decided to surrender to the Philippine National Police, with the gun he used to kill Percy and told how he, together with five others, executed the order to assassinate the journalist. The gunman identified himself as Joel Escorial, who then named his companions (the motorbike driver, two siblings who did surveillance work, and two middlemen from “Bilibid”[jail system]). Escorial, in his signed confession, said his group was paid Php550,000 pesos ($10,000) to kill Percy Lapid, and that the person who contacted him to do the job was a Jun Villamor (one of the two middemen), an inmate in the National Bilibid Prison under the Bureau of Corrections (of the Dept. of Justice).
Now, the head of the Bureau of Corrections is an appointee of the former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Director-General Gerald Bantag, famously known as the only bureau director ever who had to guts to clean up the National Penitentiary of criminal activities such as drug dealing, gambling and casinos, “tilapia-for-sale” or prostitution, and keeping of guns, ammunitions, knives, cellphones and other banned gadgets/materials by inmates. Bantag also removed the “kubols” or special “condos” of wealthy, privileged inmates such as drug lords and other notorious criminals, and “floated” employees who have been corrupted by and connived with, them. Bantag realized that the prison system did not penalize, rehabilitate, nor changed many of the criminals who had been given lengthy sentences, but instead gave them more cohesive power to create more wealth and corrupt government employees blinded by millions of drug money. Bantag himself admitted on air that on the first day of his assumption to office as BuCor head, he was offered a gift of Php100 million by the drug syndicate inside the penitentiary in exchange for his friendly cooperation--a proposal he strongly opposed. This angered the drug syndicate/criminal MAFIA, gradually hating Bantag more as he vowed and worked hard to eradicate the drug cartels and other criminality in the prison system. Bantag’s records would show how he repeatedly did his law-enforcement job with toughness and seriousness rarely seen among many men in uniform.
Bantag as Person of Interest in Percy’s Slay
The journalist’s killer who surrendered -- Joel Escarial -- named inmate Jun Villamor as the one who contracted him (via phone) … and the fact that Villamor is an inmate -- directly pointed to the source of the order to come from within the National Penitentiary. Unfortunately for Director-General Gerald Bantag, he was a subject of Percy Lapid’s on-air accusations as being a corrupt government official who had 11 vehicles, a mansion, and unexplained wealth. Listening to the recorded relevant portion of the slain commentator’s taped radio broadcast about Bantag, one could right away think that indeed Bantag could be the mastermind behind Percy’s killing. Then on the same day that the surrendered gunman was presented to the public via a press conference, the middleman (inmate Jun Villamor) died unexpectedly and was right away autopsied by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) that concluded there was no visible external injuries but only heart hemmorhaging indicating no foul play involved. Villamor’s immediate family never gave consent nor was they even asked to consent to said autopsy, by the way.
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. directed the Dept. of Justice (DOJ) Secretary to suspend Bantag for 90 days without pay pending the investigation of these two seemingly related deaths.
Thereafter, media reports quoted the PNP Chief Rodolfo Azurin naming Bantag as a person of interest (together with unnamed 160 people, subjects of Percy’s hard-hitting program), which prompted Bantag to defend himself via media interviews, calling Azurin’s focus on him as unjust and unfair. Bantag likewise refuted the late Percy’s attacks, explaining that of the 11 vehicles outside the street by his home, 4 were BuCor’s and assigned to his security personnel (unmarked and used with no specific schedules for his protection) 2 were his privately owned vehicles and the other 5 belonged to his neighbors. His home isn’t a mansion as Bantag denied the dead journalist’s claim, and Bantag suggested that he was willing to undergo a lifestyle check by the government anytime.
Connection between gunman and middleman in prison:
In a subsequent media report by the lawyer/spokesperson of the Mabasa (Percy Lapid’s) family, the following important facts emerged between the gunman and the dead middleman:
* Escarial and Villamor were “friends” way back and came from same place in Leyte (a Visayan province)
* Both worked together in Tanauan, Batangas under the employ of German Luna Agojo, who was later encarcerated for drug dealing and given a life sentence by Regional Trial Court Judge Voltaire Rosales
* Judge Voltaire Rosales was gunned down by a riding-in-tandem assassin, apparently in retaliation for handing above sentence to Agojo
* Jun Villamor has been jailed for murder of Judge Rosales per direction of Agojo
* Escarial admitted that he’s part of a killers-for-hire group
There were new developments happening as I was writing this story, however, I chose to wait for a more conclusive and clearer scenario to give my readers a truthful narration based on facts and an analysis without color or bias.
