In the aftermath of the tragedy that claimed the lives of 8 innocent foreign tourists who made the one mistake of ignoring their friends’ advice that the Philippines is not a safe country (as is the usual refrain in Hong Kong and everywhere outside of the Philippines) and generously came over to spend their vacation money to contribute to the economy of a country known for low-standards, laziness, sloppiness, and making excuses, the eyes of the international community fell on one man, the man touted by the devious oligarchs and millions of ignorant Filipinos as the “Hope of the Nation,”the son of Heroes who “would not let us down” – or so it was claimed: Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III, known by his nickname “Noynoy.”
HONG KONGERS HAVE DENOUNCED NOYNOY AS THE "SMILING DOG"
Who in the international community would not, in his right mind, look to the President of the Philippines for answers? This was, after all, a high profile international incident involving the residents of the special administrative region which has not only been the favorite urban weekend getaway of many members of the Philippines’ rich and famous, but more importantly has also been the employment site of more than 150 thousand Filipino domestic helpers and white-collar expats. Besides, it is usually the duty of a country’s highest official to be involved in all highly critical major incidents and emergencies, such as natural calamities and yes, even high profile hostage situations. That’s the very bare minimum. But this was not just any ordinary high profile hostage situation. This was an international incident.
Looking back at the events surrounding the incident and after it, practically everything about Noynoy’s involvement or lack thereof was wrong. Very wrong.
MENDOZA, PEEKING THROUGH THE BUS WINDOW
Noynoy had made absolutely no effort to take an active interest in the case, never mind that it was a high profile hostage-taking scenario involving foreigners. From that alone, Noynoy should have dropped everything else in order to ensure that this incident would end up resolved with all hostages surviving. As many others have correctly pointed out, there is no need for Noynoy to have involved himself with micro-managing the hostage negotiations or subsequent rescue operations. But if only he had dropped everything he was doing at the time and put real effort into ensuring that the appropriate high-level officials were gathered together, given all the express approval and authority to do what needed to be done, and appointed high-level stakeholders as well as an overall high-level ground commander with the relevant authority to be able to give the hostage-taker the impression that his demands were being met, the incident would have easily concluded with the freeing of all of the hostages unharmed.
By all counts, international security experts all refer to this incident as having had an extremely high chance of a speedy and successful resolution when it began – if only it was handled properly and was supported by the highest authorities. It was, after all, just about a piece of paper and having members of the national police hierarchy talking to him and assuring him that he had his job back. It wouldn’t have really mattered if his job reinstatement had been made up, he’d have let the hostages go.
But because the policemen involved in the negotiations were from the nearest local precinct and the skilled negotiators were at the national headquarters at Camp Crame, the quality of the local precinct negotiators caused the negotiations to drag on, ending in the tragedy.
BUSY IN A MEETING? MAYBE SLEEPING!
Unfortunately, Noynoy’s Failipino excuse of “business as usual” was extremely lame, unacceptable, smacks of immaturity, and points to the inability to determine priorities. Noynoy unfortunately had the childish audacity to claim that he was paying attention to more important matters such as the national budget. However, this clearly proves beyond reasonable doubt the man’s extreme incompetence as he is unable to distinguish between Urgent versus Important. He probably could argue that discussing the national budget is “more important” than just another hostage-taking incident as the budget involves the lives of millions of people – or so he may think. But he totally ignored the fact that budget discussions, while important, are not as urgent as a hostage-taking incident obviously because people’s lives are at risk in the latter. Does a one day delay in discussing the national budget result in the loss of lives? Well, not dealing with the hostage crisis has obviously resulted in deaths! Worse, since this was an international incident, diplomatic ties were at risk. Isn’t it obvious that something like this should have been classified as both important and extremely urgent?
It’s in the aftermath that we all find out that not only were ties with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and by extension, ties with the People’s Republic of China at risk, it actually turns out that ties with the United Kingdom as well as Canada were at risk as well. Two of the hostages released unharmed held British passports, while an entire family of five among those who remained on the bus held Canadian passports. 3 of those 5 Canadian-Chinese family members were among the hostages who were killed in the incident.
Obviously, Noynoy did not see anything wrong with continuing on with his “budget discussions” while the incident was still easily solvable while it was still early, and it is obvious to everyone by his compete absence from issuing statements during the incident showed that he was clearly not in charge.
SINCE NOYNOY DID NOT TAKE OVERALL CHARGE, VICE-MAYOR ISKO MORENO WENT ALL THE WAY TO QC TO GET A DOCUMENT THAT WOULD APPEASE MENDOZA
If Noynoy had stepped up to the plate to take overall responsibility early on, he could have easily delegated the overall management of the entire operations to a high-level official like DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo, and given him authority to request assistance from the Department of Defense. That duly-designated and authorized high-level official would have then been able to bring together the best minds as far as hostage crisis resolution is concerned, and could have requested immediate assistance from the office of the Ombudsman (in fact, just coming up with a fake document might have worked!) and other high profile officials of the Philippine National Police to prepare a letter of reinstatement and all other relevant documents that would have, at least on paper, met the hostage-takers’ demands, thereby giving him a good reason to free all hostages at once, and he could have easily been dealt with *after* the hostages’ lives were secured.
With such high-level sponsorship, whoever is designated to act as the overall ground commander will more easily have all the resources he needs to get the job done. The overall coordination would have been comprehensive, it wouldn’t have been messy, and everything would have been fast. Instead, the obvious lack of coordination and overall sponsorship from above meant that the ill-equipped local city government of Manila was put in charge of what was essentially supposed to have been a high-level national concern. Manila Vice-Mayor Isko Moreno, for instance, had to go all the way to Quezon City to speak with the Ombudsman just to get a piece of paper that was meant to placate the hostage-taker, but if Noynoy had been involved and had given someone like Jesse Robredo overall supervision, he could have easily notified the Ombudsman about the need for such early on and once that document was prepared and signed, it then could have been sent straight to the hostage-taker, causing him to free the hostages unharmed.
RECREATED FOOTAGE: MENDOZA WATCHED LIVE NEWS ON BUS TV, NO MEDIA CENSORSHIP
Moreover, if only Noynoy had the sense and leadership skills to take overall responsibility early on, clear-cut directives and parameters could have been given out that would have prevented the rambunctious, irresponsible, and extremely incompetent members of Philippine Mass Media from getting in the way of the successful resolution of the case. A selective media black-out could have been set-up, so that focus of the cameras would have been purely on the bus and not on the crowds that amassed near the makeshift police command center while negotiations were underway. If an assault had to be done by a properly-selected elite team of well-trained operatives, media could have then stopped live coverage and then merely relied on replays of earlier footage to broadcast on the air as was done by the more professional CNN, BBC, and Al-Jazeera.
Unfortunately, such directives cannot come from low-level police officers lacking appropriate authority and top-level sponsorship. They cannot come from mere members of the police force. The only person who can request media to give precedence to the hostage negotiators and rescue operations and order the incompetent Philippine Media to exercise prudence is none other than the highest official in the land: President Noynoy.
Alas, Noynoy did not care one bit about this hostage incident.
He obviously does not understand the concept of command responsibility, nor does he understand how to prioritize issues and incidents.
COMMANDOS OF THE ARMY'S ELITE LIGHT REACTION FORCE WERE ON STANDBY, BUT NOYNOY WAS HANDS-OFF SO THEY WERE NOT CHOSEN FOR THE ASSAULT
Instead of doing what needed to be done, Noynoy essentially left a small-time police precinct that was nearest to the scene of the crime all alone to fend for itself in handling what was a high-profile international incident that required the most elite teams available, something that Noynoy’s position as President and Commander-in-Chief could have decided on. In contrast to seeing an extremely well-trained and seasoned elite strike force sporting combat fatigues, goggles and gas-masks, and equipped with all the necessary tools, the whole World watched in horror as a clueless and rag-tag horde of ill-trained traffic enforcers and police desk clerks attempted to storm the ill-fated bus.
It was this kind of hands-off indifference exhibited by Noynoy that forced the local city government and one of its under-equipped police precincts to make do with the little that it had without active top-level executive sponsorship, when clearly, top-level coordination and executive sponsorship at the national level was precisely what would have spelled the difference between life & safety versus death & harm. Alas, the Noynoy Aquino administration has turned out to be exactly how antipinoy.com and numerous other pundits correctly predicted it to be: a complete Failure.
The Noynoy Aquino administration, consistent with the character of the president at its helm, has been characterized by extreme incompetence, an extreme lack of intelligence, a lack of initiative in taking the lead, an utter lack of coordination, a lack of accountability, and worst of all, an extreme vindictiveness & predisposition to blame the more competent economy-focused previous administration for the 8 deaths that Noynoy’s own negligence had caused to happen.
Buck-passing and Noynoy’s Usual Blame-game
COLOMA THE IDIOT SAYS: "ARROYO IS TO BLAME"
True to form, the Noynoy Administration, represented by the chimp-faced Sonny Coloma, a member of the 3-headed hydra responsible for such factual atrocities as Noynoy’s inaugural speech and his later State of the Nation Address, immediately spared no opportunity to desperately shift the blame over to Dr. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, PhD for the botched hostage negotiations and rescue operation. Moreover, in the press conference that immediately followed the aftermath of the tragedy, Noynoy Aquino – taking his cue from the police force’s stand – surprisingly took a swipe at his own creator and key sponsor, the rambunctious and irresponsible Philippine Mass Media, blaming it for not properly practicing self-censorship in airing live footage. This is perhaps the only time since Noynoy’s inauguration that the man actually showed some signs of intelligence.
The unprofessional and rambunctious Philippine Mass Media, on the other hand,blamed the police for not giving them direct guidelines and ground rules on censorship.
ABS-CBN'S MARIA RESSA BLAMED THE POLICE FOR NOT PROVIDING MEDIA WITH CENSORSHIP GUIDELINES
Unfortunately, none of them were pointing at the right direction.
Sir Donald “Bow-tie” Tsang, Chief Executive of Hong Kong S.A.R. as well as the top hierarchy of the People’s Republic of China placed the blame squarely on President Noynoy Aquino and his staff.
After all, while both the local Manila Police as well as Philippine Media had their faults – the latter clearly being more culpable and more directly responsible for the deaths of the first hostages to die between the two, only one person had the authority to effectively force the Philippine Mass Media to comply with live-video censorship directives as well as provide the Philippine National Police with its much-needed executive sponsorship as well as coordination-support with other offices, that could have helped it negotiate the hostages’ release more effectively. That one person was the President of the Philippines.
President Noynoy’s lack of interest in at least taking overall responsibility for the coordination of all parties involved was precisely what got innocent hostages killed and others severely wounded.
Blood is on the hands of Benigno S. Aquino III, yet he and his minions such as the idiot-monkey Sonny Coloma chose to be childish and immature by pointing fingers at the previous GMA Administration. Worse, numerous similarly misguided cretins like Kayat Natin’s vindictive and hateful key cry-baby Harvey Keh equally did the same.
Excerpt from http://antipinoy.com/noynoy-majormajor-booboo/
About the Author
Dr. José Rizal II has written 12 stories on this site.
José Rizal II is the present-day reincarnation of the original José Rizal in almost every way except for height (he's taller) and doctoral specialization (not an opthalmologist). In terms of hairstyle, clothing preferences, interests, and aptitude, he's practically the original reborn for this present era. *wink* * Dr. José Rizal II is on twitter... Follow him @drjr2 & e-mail him at joeriz2@yahoo.com
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