The Rolando Mendoza Fiasco Could've Been Avoided Only If Simple Guidelines Were Followed

It's always frustrating to ask this question, "Can't you follow simple guidelines?" The problem comes when some Filipinos start throwing the racist card towards foreigners or if it's a fellow Filipino (even those they consider as "pure Pinoy" when I doubt it there's such a thing) who corrects them they ask, "Are you a Filipino? We're in the Philippines!" type of talk. The same incident of not following simple guidelines led to one event in today's history. Seven years ago the Philippines made a fool out of itself with the Manila Hostage Crisis no thanks to the late Rolando Mendoza.

I remembered viewing the documentary on National Geographic a few years ago. It should be a source of shame and not a source of something to be proud of. The whole incident showed a lot of incidents where you can see people weren't following simple guidelines. TV journalists who weren't following rules contributed to the mess. If they didn't enter the area with their live cameras then the crook himself wouldn't know what's going on. But they did anyway which was a violation of obvious protocol. If there's a no crossing line because it's a CRIME SCENE then you don't cross. Yellow ribbons in a crime scene mean serious business. If you see don't cross then don't cross. You might as well consider dying a horrible death because you refuse to follow simple guidelines.

Other guidelines that might have been broken also include to value the lives of hostages over the hostage takers. Sometimes, you need to hurt or even kill someone to save someone. It could also include the fact they let Rolando's brother Gregorio assist in the negotiation. They should have done the negotiation themselves with the rules to follow. They already learned how to negotiate during a hostage. Also, they could have easily taken care of the incident by gunning him down at the leg if they wanted to bring him alive. If Rolando was firing the gun like crazy then shouldn't it be time to care more about the lives of hostages over the life of the criminal? But the problem is that thanks to "human rights" in the Philippines may be the reason why they didn't shoot him when they had to shoot him.

Should I mention that Noynoy Aquino's indifference towards the incident nearly caused Hong Kong and the Philippines to break all ties? If Noynoy followed simple protocol by apologizing for the incident or that if he decided to exercise power while he was there why did't he do it? He's the head of state and he should also take responsibility to apologize for the incident. It's a good thing that Mayor Joseph Estrada apologized for the fiasco thus healing the rift between the Philippines and Hong Kong. Any hostage incident is a hostage incident. If a hostage incident fiasco happened in Hong Kong involving Filipinos getting massacred then it's just as bad as the Rolando Mendoza fiasco. A crime is a crime and a bad event is a bad event regardless where it happened.

Some Filipinos can go ahead and cry racism but it's really the truth that the Rolando Mendoza fiasco is a case of bad peace and order in the Philippines. There's nothing racist about making a documentary based on it. There's nothing racist about making documentaries on the atrocities of every country. It's all part of learning history. I wish that Filipino history textbooks will write about this failure called the Rolando Mendoza incident together with every fiasco in every administration.