Yesterday, 23rd of August 2010 was a fateful day for the Philippines.
A decorated cop who was relieved from service due to charges of extortion held hostage 25 Chinese national. The crisis, which was beamed around the world, lasted for more than 11 hours ended tragically with 9 people dead, including the hostage-taker Senior Inspector Rolando Gonzales.
The crisis has highlighted several things that are wrong with our country. Unfortunately, as the blaming game starts we are bound to see this scenario happen again.
In any emergency situation, these are groups of people are almost always involved; the law enforcement agency, the media and the public. The success of resolving an emergency revolves around the competency, respect and maturity of the three. It is very evident from the start that those involved lacked those three components.
The primary law enforcement agency tasked to handle yesterday’s emergency was the Philippine National Police, which was supposed to be assisted by the city government of Manila. From the get-go, it was apparent that those directly handling the hostage situation lost control of the situation. There was no one directly responsible for the actions and coordination of people involved. It seemed that everyone wanted to play the part of a hero.
There are several questions that need to be answered; why was the brother of Senior Inspector Gonzales allowed to be in the site? Was there any assessment made on the possible repercussions of this action? Who will was directly responsible for this man?
Why was the media allowed to have a blow by blow account of the hostage situation? Why wasn’t there any news blackout issued? Or, why wasn’t any one assigned to handle the press briefings for the media?
Who gave the go signal to assault the bus? Was there a concrete plan in case they needed to assault the bus? Were there other options available just in case their primary plan didn’t work? When it was clear that Senior Inspector Gonzales wasn’t a threat anymore, who allowed the public to run and surround the bus? Why didn’t the police cordon off the crime scene?
The media, in trying to out-scoop one another placed the life of the hostages, the hostage-taker and the police who were directly in the line of fire. They could have argued that they have a job to do; but they also have a moral responsibility to ensure that lives will not be endangered by what they are doing.
In choosing to air and broadcast the outburst of the brother of the hostage-taker, they made a bad judgment call. It can be argued that it was news and relevant to what was happening at that time; so is the fact that what was happening may be heard or seen in the bus’ in-board entertainment system. The outbursts of the brother proved to be one of the triggers of the deadly resolution to the whole event.
When the driver miraculously escaped from the bus the media immediately asked questions without even thinking whether it would be detrimental to the current situation. They should have left the police to their jobs first. By telling the public that the driver said all hostages were killed placed the police in a no-win situation. They needed to storm the bus to ensure that those alive or breathing can still be saved but at the same time, having no time to verify if what the driver said is true may place the hostages in and the police in greater danger.
It has been said in Spiderman that with great power lay great responsibility. The media should have regulated themselves and checked their ranks. Doing their jobs is not a license to endanger the lives of many.
What the hell were by-standers doing at the site? Don’t you guys have better things to do? Filipinos who have time in their hands and were looking for a sense of adventure converged in the Quirino grandstand. You didn’t help the police by being there. Instead of concentrating all their limited manpower ensuring that the place is safe and no other untoward incident would happen, they were forced to keep the crowd under control.
The event is an indictment of the Filipino people and the institutions that we have. We must continually work at improving our institutions. We can’t continue blaming our circumstance. We can’t simply accept that we become victims of events. We must decide to act now.
We will definitely suffer another black eye. Already, Hong Kong has placed us in their Black List. As a result of this event, there is a strong possibility that tourists will have second or even third thoughts visiting our country.
We must convince them that this is an isolated incident. That we, as a nation, learned from this event and that we will improve our institutions because of it. It is not yet too late to act decisively and positively. As a friend put it, if one man can cause so much bad publicity just imagine what one million well-meaning people can do.
