there’s still so much to be said and asked about the aug 23 bloodbath but i’m holding back just because the hong kong chinese are hurt enough, enraged enough, and things are bad enough for filipinos in hong kong.   also, even if i didn’t vote for him, i don’t want to make it worse for the president who, naturally, is getting the brunt of the blame for distancing himself, treating the hostaging of foreigners as a local rather than national affair.

like philippine star‘s boo chanco says, it’s P-Noy’s leadership abilities on the line:

He is just two months into the job and I want to believe he is competent and able to do the right things. Now I am not sure because of how badly he miscalculated the gravity of the hostage crisis. I also get the impression he is not organized to handle crisis situations. I am not even sure the people around him are experienced enough to handle crisis. For some of them, including the also invisible Executive Secretary, last Monday’s event may even be their first crisis situation….

Probably the Palace didn’t think much of the situation atthe start. That’s the first mistake. That’s probably why the President confidently left the matter to the police and went on to discuss with the Health Secretary the worsening dengue epidemic and the budget message with his budget secretary.

Any crisis involving life and death situations, more so one with international repercussions, should be given high priority. Duh! If the President’s Communications Team had more experience, they should have been more persuasive with the President taking a higher profile specially after the major networks pre-empted regular programming in favor of a live coverage of the event.

So we are told P-Noy was actually engaged. He was reported to have spent time that afternoon and evening at the nearby Emerald restaurant that served as a kind of command headquarters. But no one knew that. For all we knew, he was just feasting on the excellent jumbo siopao for which Emerald is known for. I understand, he was advised to stay in the shadows. It was a bad advice as we now all know.

Worse… the first thing the public saw and heard after the carnage was a President who seemed remote and in the words of a Hong Kong legislator, frivolous and dismissive. It was unfortunate that P-Noy was seen by the world with a smirk on his face as he said that anyway, there were more casualties in similar hostage events in Russia (the one in the concert hall and the one in a schoolhouse in Beslan) and the one in Germany (possibly Munich Olympics).

That may be true and may probably provide perspective but was a most insensitive thing to say. It was also beside the point at a time when 8 lives were lost because of our inept handling of the situation….

The incident also confirmed our worse fears that Coloma and Carandang are not talking to each other. They are not synchronizing the message coming out of the Palace. They may even be trying to upstage each other. What a horrible mess!!!

If the Palace is this dysfunctional in handling a crisis involving one crazy man, how will P-Noy and his boys handle a repeat of an Ondoy situation or heaven forbid… a major earthquake along the Marikina fault line? I shudder at the thought!…

In our column last Friday, we were ready to be more understanding because we thought they (the Manila police) didn’t have enough training and equipment. But that is not the case. There were units that had the right training and equipment except that they were not used by the ground commander. If this isn’t stupidity, I don’t know what is.

If P-Noy had a more direct hand, I am sure he would have the sense to order the use of the more trained Police Special Action Force or the US-trained Light Reaction Company (LRC) which is under the military’s Joint Special Operations Group instead of the jokers in the Manila Police’s so called SWAT group….

What P-Noy ends up doing in the next few weeks will be carefully watched by everyone. What he does or fails to do will impact on how people feel about his competence and credibility as our country’s Chief Executive. Speaking for myself, I want P-Noy to succeed for our sake. But he needs to show leadership or the next six years will be a continuation of the horrible years we seem to be doomed to suffer. Right now, P-Noy seems too laid back for comfort.

enough said.   for all our sakes let’s pray that justice secretary leila de lima’s investigation proceeds as professionally and impeccably as possible, and that the chips are allowed to fall where they may, regardless of consequences to whomever.

Trip of high-level delegation cancelled (5:13 p.m.)
Thursday, August 26

MANILA — The flight of high-level delegation formed by the President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to explain Monday’s hostage crisis to China and Hong Kong governments has been cancelled Thursday.

The members of the high-level delegation composing Vice President Jejomar Binay, Local Government Secretary, Jesse Robredo and Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda were supposed to fly to Beijing, China today.

But in a statement issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs, it said that they are still awaiting for the confirmation from the Chinese government.

“The Philippine government has planned for a high-level delegation to visit the People’s Republic of China and the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, and is awaiting confirmation from the Chinese side on the arrangement that will ensure that the mission of the planned visit is achieved,” text message from the DFA forwarded by Palace Ricky Carandang read.

It added that proper announcement will be made regarding the schedule of the trip. (Jill Beltran/Sunnex)

hello?   mr. president?   you should have taken mr. tsang’s call. you should have expected he would call to ask about his people — wouldn’t you, in his place?   and you should have been ready and able to take whatever he had to dish out, AND to defend your strategy of waiting it out, AND to be open to his suggestions.   after all, the lives of 15 hong kong nationals were at stake.   after all, it was past 4 p.m., over six hours of horribly dangerous captivity for his people, and he must have wanted assurance that something everything was being done to effect their rescue.   he absolutely deserved to be listened to.   so, really, nakakagulat ba, masakit ba, that you we are now getting the silent treatment from mr. tsang?   tit for tat.   a painful snub for a painful painful snub.   maybe until heads start rolling?

meanwhile the senate hearing at least clears up one thing: it wasn’t just the media coverage of the brother’s drama resisting arrest that angered the hostage-taker.   it was also the ombudsman’s letter — basura daw — because it failed to give him what he was asking for.   and it was also the brother’s appeal not to give up until his gun (the brother’s) had been returned.   so let’s go easy on media.   i was watching tv all day; and i’m glad it was covered live by media because if not, we would be bogged down now by questions of what really happened rather than why.  yes the coverage got excessive as the drama escalated, and yes, the scoop mentality ruled at that point, so yes, next time, they should know enough to draw a line.

meanwhile on anc right now it’s manila’s mayor and vice-mayor and some cops again going through isko’s narrative of his negotiations with mendoza.   what i want to know is, it was six pm by the time he delivered that letter from the ombudsman, and it wss the first serious response to the hostage-taker’s demand?  it took them all of eight hours to come up with “garbage”?

i just saw a recreation (computer animation) of what supposedly happened inside the bus when mendoza went bloody mad, and it’s horrendous and heartbreaking.  reminds me that i kept wondering, while watching that silent bus off in the distance, what was going on inside, what was it like exactly for the hostages all throughthose horrible hours.   we were seeing nothing, hearing nothing, it was easy to believe everything was cool, and under control…

i wonder now, what if the media had been a little curious about the hostages, sino-sino ba ang nasa loob, how many males, females, kids, elders, teens. it should have been easy enough to find some pictures of them, show us their faces, remind us, and the police, and the palace, that there were, those were, real persons in there…   and what if the police had managed to stick a tiny high-tech microphone device somewhere that allowed us, them to hear what was being said, cried, screamed inside the bus…   then maybe there would have been more of a sense of urgency from the first hour?   and the police would have known not to believe the escaped driver, not everyone was dead?

yes, we’re all experts on hindsight.   for me it’s a coping mechanism.   helps me sleep nights.

here’s etta rosales, incoming chief of the commission on human rights on hostage-taker’s demands:

“Dapat binigay na nila yung hinihingi, ano ba naman yun katumbas ng buhay. Kapag tinimbang mo yung dalawa, mas mabigat ang usapin yung (They should have granted the request instantly because lives are at stake.to give protection to the lives of the innocent)” …

and check out ricardo saludo’s Lessons from the grandstand carnage.   he reminds us of the ducut hostage-taking and how successfully that was handled, oo nga naman.

Back then, top government officials were involved in handling the crisis early on, from Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Manila Mayor Lito Atienza, and Metro Manila Development Authority Chairman Bayani Fernando to Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral, Senator Bong Revilla and former Ilocos Sur governor Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson.

Their combined efforts helped the police resolve the crisis peacefully. Secretary Ermita made sure the public and the media were briefed on what the government was doing (see his 2007 press conference on youtube). Sec. Cabral assured Ducut that the children would get a good education—his avowed reason for staging the incident. And Ducut eventually surrendered to Governor Singson.

This time around, however, Lesson No. 2—get the top state brass involved—was deemed inappropriate. On Monday the Aquino Administration preferred to let the PNP ground commander to take full charge of the tourist bus hijacking, with limited public involvement by higher-ups. In his press briefing on the incident, President Benigno Aquino 3rd defended the police and expressed the fear that involving high officials would escalate the hostage-taker’s demands.

Thankfully, in 2007 that did not happen; instead, national and city leaders helped resolve the potentially fatal standoff. Of course, Ducut, a civil engineer who founded the nursery school where his hostages studied, is a far different character than dismissed police senior superintendent Mendoza, who was fired without retirement benefits by the Ombudsman for extortion and abuse. So maybe there was good reason to use a different approach than the one that successfully harnessed top brass in 2007.

but surely a “different approach” should still have included negotiations by negotiators whose words carried weight and who could have prevailed on, worked with, the ombudsman to devise a creative way of temporarily skirting the law to prevent bloodshed.

for all we know mendoza was waiting for a bong revilla, even a chavit singson, to attend to him, so when all he got was an isko moreno, well, kaka-agitate naman talaga, di ba.   i swear, jojo binay would could have worked wonders.   i bet chavit would have loved to help.   but i suppose the palace didn’t want anyone grandstanding and upstaging the prez?

everyone’s blaming the police for incompetence and the media for oversharing.   i blame the president for not sending a representative to take charge on his behalf, like maybe the vice-president, yeah, rambotito himself, why ever not, or sige na nga the dilg secretary, but someone of national prominence, someone smart, someone with authority, because i have no doubt that it would have made a huge difference.

in a presscon today ricky carandang said that the president decided not to show himself or be part of negotiations because his fear, or that of his advisers? was that the hostage-taker’s demands might escalate kung siya mismo ang kausap.   but did it not occur to them that part of the hostage-taker’s agitation might have been brought on by the fact that no one important was talking to him?   i mean, you know, isko moreno? bakit naman niya papansinin ang isang pipitsuging vice-mayor.

and really if someone smart had been in charge, then released hostages might have been thoroughly debriefed and it would have been found out that the hostage-taker had a tv set in the bus, even if it hadn’t been turned on yet.   it would have been smart to assume that mendoza might check it out eventually,reason enough to impose a media blackout earlier in the day.   then the brother might never have staged that scene that added to the hostage-taker’s agitation.

what upsets me is that the only palace statement from sonny coloma was to the effect that the safety of the hostages was of utmost importance, and yet nothing was done to precisely ensure this safety.   i stand by my first tweet: why not just pretend to give in to mendoza’s demands, bring that document from the ombudsman reinstating him, never mind about due process and the law, just make him happy and get the hostages released FIRST, and THEN saka siya banatan, arrest him for hostage-taking atbp., i mean, you know?   why ever not?   what’s a white lie if it saves lives?

instead we had a president whose strategy was to “wait him out,” hoping the guy would just release all the hostages out of the goodness of his heart, how freakin smart was that.   no wonder the world’s thoroughly disgusted with us.