Special Farces

ON AUGUST 23, the Quirino Grandstand became the site of a tense hostage crisis drama, the first (and hopefully the last) under the new Aquino administration. The 12-hour standoff ended with the deaths of about eight Chinese citizens and their hostage-taker, former Senior Inspector Rolando Mendoza. Although the hostage crisis came to an end, it could've been a much happier ending.

According to popular opinion, it was the sole fault of Philippine SWAT operators that the hostage situation ended in a messy firefight.

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So this is what happened - it was all going so well - Mendoza had released nine hostages before his 3 o'clock "deadlock", wherein nothing happened - but when night fell, things started to take a turn for the worse.

Rolando Mendoza's brother, SPO2 Gregorio Mendoza, after he had walked out in negotiations with his brother, was detained by the police on suspicion of collaboration with the hostage-taker. The media was not told to stay away - in fact they got everything LIVE on national television. This is the same problem that Indian Special Forces faced during the Mumbai terror attack.

So Mendoza sees what's happening on TV and something inside him snaps. He decides to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy and goes totally ape on the hostages. The driver of the bus, who was previously handcuffed to the bus's steering wheel, picked the lock with a nail cutter and ran for it straight through the siege lines and into the crowd of media. After he catches his breath he announces that all the hostages have been killed, and this is the signal for the police and SWAT operators to attack.

And then things go a little awry. Turns some of the hostages are alive - and Mendoza uses them as he originally intended - as human shields. Several die, but a few hostages survive long enough to die in their hospital beds. Only one of the hostages that were not released in the day made it out alive, albeit with critical injuries.

So who's to blame? Everyone seems to say SWAT. The reason they didn't simply roll in with guns blazing the very second they found out about Mendoza was because (and Mendoza knew this) they could not risk civilian casualties. So when the driver comes out telling them that everyone's dead, it was time to stop caring and kill Mendoza. Only problem was that they were alive.

Okay, SWAT didn't have a lot going for them, that's true - but they thought they could be careless now that they assumed the hostages were dead. Not exactly justification for eight dead Chinese, though.(Michael Valderrama)