organised crime. The usual life expectancy of anyone engaged in this sort of activity in Manila is about five seconds. Batuigas may be a brave man but he is certainly not a stupid one. He knows his life is
THE MAN FROM TEMPO
constantly in danger and he takes precautions. During a recent trip to Manila [before the killing of Aquinol I had lunch
with him in the old
National
Press Club.
I'd known Ruther, on and off, for 12 years having met him in Hong Kong in 1971
Two Gun Batuigas does it again!
when he was here for a story about a gang of Filipino gunmen who had arrived to grab a so-called American movie starlet. She had some indiscreet disclosures to make about her alleged romantic attachments with an extremely
Part private eye, part mercenary, part
for the oppressed, Ruther Batuigas is, above all, a newsman extraordinaire. ln his 24years in Manila newspapers, the guntoting reporter has been shot, stabbed. uncovered hundreds of stories and acted as negotiator in hostage dramas. lt's all in a normal day's work for The Man From Tempo. ombudsman
Ruther Batuigas has done it again! And his friends are not surprised. When the Philippines Constabulary, military
investigators and armies of other security men failed to come up with the identity of the unknown corpse found alongside the body of slain Senator Benigno Aquino, Ruther started looking. It wasn't long before his paper, the bouncy tabloid TEMPO, had named the dead man correctly Rolana well-known gundo Galman, for-hire. What's more, Ruther and his team of crack reporters tracked down the addresses of Galman's family, only to find
out that all his relatives
had
been whisked away by armed men in civilian clothes immediately after the assassination. At that stage, the military were claiming they had no idea of
high Filipino official.
Hong Kong police rounded
up the men and they were
the identity of the man whom they say killed Aquino alone in what was virtually a suicide attack lif their version is accepted.l It was a great scoop, but the
sort of thing that is all in a normal days work for the co-
lourful Batuigas. ln many ways, he is one of the last hangovers from the wild old days of the Manila press in the years
before martial law when
a
tommy-gun came in almost as handy for a reporter as a type-
writer and almost every
photographer carried a pistol as well as a camera. Batuigas is a living legend in the Filipino press. That he is living at all is a miracle. At first glance, he does not appear to be the sort of material of which legends are made, but then Ruther pulls up his shirt and reveals his stomach and chest.
It looks like the craters on the moon; he has been shot three or four times [he doesn't recall, exactly] once at close range by a shotgun loaded with heavy shot, once by a .45 revolver. He's also been stabbed a couple of times, but he considers that hardly worthy of mention. The result is not a pretty sight. He has also shot back; Batuigas has shot dead at least six men but says the killings were in self defence. Police have never proceeded with any murder charges against him.
Ruther Batuigas is
a
small, pencil moustache, a big Filipino smile and a silver .45 automatic -in his belt. He needs it. Over his 24 years in the Manila
slender man
with a
press, he has uncovered
scores of stories on police corruptยกon, political plots and
returned to Manila [they all had diplomatic passportsl but not before the leader of the group advised me never to go back to the Philippines. A couple of weeks later, this man was killed in one of the periodic political gunbattles that used to rage through the country before martial law was declared and most gun-toting Filipinos had to give up their weapons. But not Ruther. With martial law came the enforced closure of most of the Manila press and he found himself out of a job. So he started a private detective agency, acting mostly as a bounty hunter rounding up criminals for the posted rewards. lt was a lot of fun but when a job back on a paper came up, he went back to a newsroom. He still has his security company, a private army of 4OO men with whom he keeps in contact via a private communication system linked to his bullet-proof car. There's not much that goes
on in Manira that Ruther Batuigas does not hear about. Even by the lively and loose standards of the Filipino press, his stories are, to say the least, outspoken. A couple of weeks ago he had 1 1 libel writs out against him for about 650 mil-
lion. "Situation normal," he
grins.
He gets his news from his security guards [many of them bodyguards of senior government officials or leading businessmen who fear kidnap] and from another army of underworld informers, most of them crimnals. He is also trusted by senior policemen. On several occasions, would-be kidnappers have been surrounded by
security
forces and
Ruther Batuigas has been called in as the only person trusted by both sides. He has stripped to
his underpants to show he is unarmed and walked into buildings occupied by desperate criminals or terrorists and talked them into surrender. Why do they listen to him
rather than
the
police.
He
shrugs: "l suppose they want to get out alive. " Driving through Manila with Ruther is a lively experience. Everyone knows him. Police stop traffic to let him through. He talks about the threats on his life.
ls he still allowed to carry a gun? "Oh, yeah," he says, and pulls out a silver-plated .45 automatic. What about his driver? The chauffer casually displays a .357 magnum. Ruther leans over into the back of the limosine and pulls up an automatic assault rifle. He's also got a case of grenades in the boot just in case he runs into serious trouble. He sips his beer in the National Press Club and admits:
"l love working on news-
papers. You can still have a bit of fun. "
Wife
SefVยกCe mOVeS
Hong Kong veteran Alan Thomas has been appointed news editor, eastern region, Reuters Asia. ln his 18 years with the agency he has been posted in Hong Kong, Singapore, USSR and Tanzania as well as the home office in London.
Thomas succeeds Peter Mosley who has been named regional assocยกate
editor. ln
this post, Mosley will carry the special burden of introducing complex video-editi ng systems. He is well qualified for the job; he has worked in the space capital of Houston and is a former science
editor of Reuters. James Foley has been moved from Japan, where he was
chief correspondent
for
Reuters, becomes
editor-in-charge of the world desk in Hong Kong.
Good news
from reuters lf
Reuters goes public, the
value is estimated as being something in the order of $7 billion, a tidy amount in anyone's currency, even the hard-pressed Hong Kong dollar. It is probable that the likelihood of Reuters being floated on the London Stock Exchange is nowhere being followed more avidly than in the town of Burnie in the Australian island state
of
Tasmania.
Burnie? Yes, it seems the local newspaper, The Advocate, own 1.14 percent of Reuters stock, the result of a $14 investment in 1935. The present value of the investment if the flotation goes ahead? About $7 million. That's worth a few lines on the Reuters economic wire.