Hagad: A need to get mad again

THE anguish and (let's admit it), the contempt that many Hong Kong Chinese residents feel against Filipinos in general, and our government in particular, bites deeply into our psyche. We were the toast of the world after the May elections but that botched hostage situation which resulted in eight Chinese tourists dead has roasted our nation in the eyes of the international community. If they do not trust us now, they have every right to. If they think we cannot secure them if they visit our country, no words of assurance from us now can convince them otherwise.

We have two choices as a Nation - we can grovel and moan in depression, beat our breasts in contrition and hope that Hong Kong and the world will forgive us; or we can rise up in righteous anger like the Hong Kong Chinese did and demand immediate action from our Government to make sure that a hostage and terror situation such as the one that happened last week will not happen again or, even if it does, that we are in a position to handle it properly.

Post your reaction to the Manila hostage crisis

My immediate reaction to the Chinese display of anger against us and our Government was to say, "How dare they blame the whole country for the act of one misguided Filipino! How dare they call our government incompetent just because one team of law enforcement officers could not prevent the lives of some of their citizens from being lost! How dare they treat the 200,000 Filipinos working tirelessly and loyally in Hong Kong as if each one was a criminal to be held in suspicion and contempt!"

But then I looked around and watched many of our government officials wash their hands off, refusing to take any blame and pointing at another or others who in turn were passing the responsibility off to someone else. I see some apologizing for what happened but appearing for all the world as though they felt no shock and anger at what happened and no one was demanding that heads roll and policies/procedures be corrected immediately. I see fellow Filipinos bowing their heads in abject shame and apology in the face of the collective Chinese wrath and I realize, the people of Hong Kong are reacting as they should, and we are not!

Taking innocent people hostage is a grievous crime, whatever one's reason is and in whatever part of the world it is committed. Equally criminal is the omission or worse, the neglect of Government to prepare itself to handle such a crisis situation properly. An angry reaction and the collective pressure of an angered nation is the most effective weapon to deter a repetition of the crime and to force the leadership to correct itself. We should be apologetic to the victims of dismissed Police Officer Rolando Mendoza, but we should also be angry at our Government and demand immediate reform for unnecessarily giving him the space and the reason to commit the crime. In this sense, the citizens of Hong Kong are right.

They are of course over-reacting when some employers of Filipinos in Hong Kong terminated their services because of the hostage incident. In a sense, so did we when the Government of Singapore decided to impose the death penalty on Flor Contemplacion. But our collective anger produced meaningful reforms, both in Singapore and in the Philippines. This is one time when we as a people need to get mad again.