On March 2, 2026, Palawan News sent a formal media inquiry to Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines Director General Raul L. Del Rosario. The letter was a specific press inquiry, requesting for clarification about what DG Del Rosario knew about the threats to Joanna Jonson-Infante — the acting manager of the Puerto Princesa International Airport who was shot dead on February 18, and how CAAP handled the private messages she had sent alerting her superior to what she believed were threats to her safety.
As of this writing, CAAP has not responded. Not a word. Not even the professional courtesy of an acknowledgment, a holding statement, or a declaration that the agency declines to comment at this time.
Under the Anti-Red Tape Authority’s implementing rules, government agencies are expected to respond to legitimate communications from the public, and by reasonable extension the press, with at least an acknowledgment. The rationale for those rules is because a citizen or institution raising a matter of public concern deserves to be heard. CAAP has chosen to treat our inquiry as if it were never sent.
We understand the requirements and protocols of an active murder investigation. We understand that the Philippine National Police’s Special Investigation Task Group Infante is building up a case, and we respect the necessity of not prematurely exposing evidence or compromising prosecutorial strategy. We stated as much in our letter.
We were not asking CAAP to narrate the criminal case. We asked CAAP to account for its own institutional conduct – specifically, what the Director General did with a private message from a subordinate who told him she was afraid she would be killed.
Going by the evidence we assume are now in the possession of law enforcement, Joanna Jonson-Infante’s final weeks left a trail of fear. She messaged the Director General on January 28. She filed a blotter at Barangay San Pedro and at the police station on January 30. She directly accused Mohammad Naga S. Rascal, the then-CAAP Area IV Manager, as the source of threats. Three weeks later, she was dead.
We have sources telling us that the Philippine National Police has secured evidence that may link CAAP officials at a level above her pay grade to the murder. We report on this not to preempt the ongoing case investigation but because we believe it is material to why CAAP has chosen to ignore a press inquiry. When there is this kind information vacuum, suspicion flows, and the public harboring such could not be blamed. Silence in this instance undermines public confidence that the protection of the investigation is the actual motive.
There is a public interest issue in how CAAP Puerto Princesa is being managed. Joanna’s complaints describe a workplace that is dangerous to whistleblowers like her. Whether that environment persists today, and who bears institutional responsibility for allowing it to take root, is a matter that the traveling public and the government employees who work at that airport have every right to understand. What is happening at CAAP is not an isolated failure of one agency. It is a disturbing validation of what critics of government have long been saying: that whistleblowers in the Philippine bureaucracy do not receive adequate protection as they should. Joanna Jonson-Infante did everything right by documenting her threats, telling here superior and filing blotters. But the system that was supposed to protect her did not. And now, the very agency implicated in her vulnerability cannot even be moved to answer a valid public inquiry.
