DEFEATED Presidential candidate JC Delos Reyes of Ang Kapatiran said the hostage crisis in Quirino Grandstand was an embarrassment for the country.
"It was an unfortunate incident for the country," he said, adding the president (Benigno Aquino III) as the commander-in-chief should have been on top of everything at the height of the incident that was broadcast globally and made known to the whole world by real-time media coverage.
The lapses on that incident were due to the lapses from the top to the bottom levels of our government officials. The President should have made us feel that he is on top of the situation, even just through phone calls, but it did not happen, delos Reyes also said.
He added that even the concerned top government officials have not done any move to ask the media when to cover the incident live and when not to allow it, given the fact that there are instances when live media coverage should have been disallowed, particularly when human life was at stake.
That hostage incident damaged the image of the country in the international community.
De los Reyes was in Bacolod City Friday to personally meet and thank Bishop Vicente Navarra for supporting his candidacy in the last May 10 elections. He was along with Eric Manalang, the national president of Pro-Life Philippines.
De los Reyes who garnered 43,000 votes all over the country in the last elections also said, "I'd like to categorically state my opinion that there indeed was fraud in the last elections. I guess I can do nothing about it but the truth is, there was. We were witnesses in Antipolo where 63 PCOS machines were discovered to have anomalous logs but there was never any formal report on what we unearthed," he said.
Right now, what we can do is to pray for our leaders that they will be real proponents for the common good of the people and that they would be given the wisdom for the good of our country, delos Reyes added. (TED)