“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
—Henry David Thoreau
It seems that the whole world was glued to the news today after word went out that Rolando Mendoza, a senior inspector charged with extortion, took a whole bus of tourists hostage. The situation was slow for the most part, and many believed that it was going to end on an uneventful note. But when the media started airing footage of Mendoza’s brother being arrested, he snapped and shot two Hong Kong tourists.
The tourists were allegedly supposed to fly back to their hometowns this evening, but many of them didn’t make it out of the country alive. People died when we heard those gunshots, but they were hidden behind curtains. But that doesn’t take away the fact that we witnessed their deaths.
At the hostage scene. Photo from CNN.com
What seemed to be the entire world watched the hostage situation unfurl live on television, with newscasters emotionally stammering out the news in between gunshots as the SWAT team unsuccessfully tried to enter the bus using sledgehammers. The image of the PNP on television was laughable: crouched behind shields, the blue-clad officers cowered in fear as they nervously poked the bus with their guns. Twitter was full of jokes; allusions to various action movies (and even Thor, no thanks to the hammers) were the jokes of the hour. SWAT was given an endless number of acronyms: “Sobrang Wala Akong Training,” “Sugod! Wait.. Atras.. Takbo!”
Today’s hostage crisis was an emotional roller coaster, to say the least. I was at my desk the whole afternoon, and the emotional timeline went something like this:
Noon: “I heard some policeman held a bus full of tourists hostage. That’s crazy! Does he honestly think he’ll get his job back?”
3pm: “What’s the update on the hostage situation? Oh, he released some hostages? That’s good. Maybe he’ll let them all out later and surrender.”
4pm: “Uh, why are they letting Tulfo handle the situation? What’s going on?”
5pm: “Gee, thanks for nothing, Rolando Mendoza. The Philippines is now trending on Twitter, and we’re on the cover of CNN.com.”
6pm: “So he was apparently wronged by some bigshots. I kinda feel sorry for him.”
7pm: “These Tweets are so hilarious.”
8.30pm: “OH MY GOD HE ACTUALLY KILLED THOSE PEOPLE! WHAT THE HELL!”
8.45pm: “Oh my God these Tweets about the policemen are so funny.”
9pm: “The sad thing about living in the Philippines is that these things happen often enough for us to laugh about the incompetence of the policemen in the hostage situation. The comments on Twitter sure are hilarious, but are we already that jaded?”
10pm: “Venus Raj had better brush up on current events. I bet she’ll be asked a question related to the issue at the Miss Universe pageant tomorrow.”
10.30pm: “Rolando Mendoza did something unspeakable, but because someone must have wronged him terribly first. It must take a horrible sort of desperation to do that. The question is, who else has blood on their hands?”
What drives a man to that sort of desperation? All signs point to the fact that Rolando Mendoza knew that what he was doing was wrong: he scribbled “Big mistake to correct a big wrong decision” on a piece of paper and stuck it on the window of the bus. He let some hostages go, including a man with diabetes and a mother with her children. Reports also say that he was a model policeman, even winning an award from the Manila Jaycees for being one of the 10 Outstanding Police of 1986. Some Tweets say that the hostages claimed that he was nice to them until he saw his brother arrested on television—and that’s when he sprayed gunfire on them.
For the next few days, the news will be full of stories about the Quirino hostage event. There will be testaments from survivors. Politicians will be clambering up on the soapbox to release fiery condemnations of the situation. And there will be criticism, plenty of it. But most of it will be criticism of the PNP and of the media (which admittedly handled the situation badly), and not for the system that allowed people like Mendoza to snap and take people hostage out of sheer desperation.
I do not condone what Mendoza did; after all, many people had gone through worse and had coped with their situations admirably. I do not, as one person on Twitter insinuated, think that it’s okay to hijack a bus and kill the people inside it because the world screwed me up. But there’s a greater issue here, and it’s something more alarming than a disgruntled ex-policeman.
There are whispers that Mendoza was framed by some powerful people, and that he simply wanted to clear his name so he could go back to work and claim his pension upon retirement. Mendoza, they said, had a lifetime of clean service and did not want it all end up in flames. I don’t know what kind of logic drove him to do what he did; perhaps he thought he would get off easy like Jun Ducat, who held a busload of kids hostage in 2007. “Justice here is unfeeling and deaf,” Ducat said. “But he should respect the rights and the security of his hostages (and) follow whatever would be negotiated with the police.”
In the end, nothing is really sure. But we have to stop our culture of going after the small fry; instead, it’s time to dig deeper and unearth what could really be the problem—why did Mendoza do what he did, and who was he up against?
Who else has blood on their hands?
It’s a shame we declare a case closed when the visible, obvious participants of a crime are arrested/punished/killed. How about the higher ups? Filipinos have extremely short memory, and I think it’s the media’s responsibility to ‘remind’ them by going beyond the sensational, and investigating the real goings on behind the scenes.
It’s been less than a week since the incident, and it’s been nothing but finger-pointing and retaliation from HK citizens because they’re understandably upset at the lack of progress with the case. Oh man, what’s happening to the world.