by Alex Roldan
Who should be blamed for the bungled hostage-taking incident that resulted in the death of eight foreign tourists and the hostage-taker? The incident has made the country legendary in terms of the sloppiness of our authorities in dealing with hostage crisis situations, and the state of the readiness of our armed authorities to operate during such situations.
The video footages seen on TV during the whole drama stripped the Filipinos’ sense of self as a nation. It was clearly a disgrace! The clumsy actions of our policemen revealed to the whole world their ineptness to the point of being tragicomic!
The SWAT’s embarrassing rescue operation was a testament to the seeming deterioration of this elite force’s capability to do what it is expected to do. Hopefully, it is not a reflection on the other SWAT units assigned to the other regions of the country. It did not help any that the head of the PNP was quick to point to the lack of funds to adequately train and equip its personnel for this type of emergency. He asked for millions of pesos more to upgrade SWAT teams. Yeah, like shutting the barn door after the horse has sped off to parts unknown.
The crisis committee for the hostage-taking incident, the ground commander, the mayor of Manila, God knows who else have refused to acknowledge culpability in the botched rescue operation and pointed to one another as the culprit to blame. This blaming game is all too familiar and members of Congress are having a difficult time who to pin the blame on. They vow heads will roll. Haha! That we want to see. Many of our lawmakers have been there for as long one can remember and yet they fail to realize that Congress may be partly to blame, too. It is the role of Congress to ensure that the country’s resources are spent effectively to ensure public safety.
Now they blame media for being partly responsible for the comedy of errors that led to the carnage having failed to follow ethical standards in their coverage of the incident. There has to be some truth to that assumption which has still to be ferreted out in the course of the Congressional investigation. Some members of media are reminding their colleagues to exercise self restraint, but there are those, particularly the big networks, who choose to ignore ethical standards in their eager-beaver rush to outscoop each other. And for what? That other kind of //*game—the ratings game. That’s what!
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