The D Spot

The 10-hour drama unfolded right before our very eyes, and it was caught by international media. Again, we are in the center of the world, not for the good things we have done, but for another FIASCO! There were too many in the past to remember, the most brutal of which was the Maguindanao Massacre. Our country is again the center of the world’s attention.

In the beginning I thought I was particularly desensitized from everything (though I literally puked days before at the video of the torture victim that was again and again and again shown on TV) until the hostage crisis happened and ended with really heartbreaking and tragic results. The hostage is over–with 4 hostages dead plus dead the hostage taker Rolando Mendoza himself (as of this writing).  Earlier, 9 hostages were released while the driver escaped. This was the policeman’s desperate act of asking for his position back. There were negotiations, I guess, and there were several armed men in the scene–SWAT, SOCO, policemen and what have we, including the media and the uzis.

I still do not know what went wrong–BUT something was REALLY TERRIBLY WRONG! It was a FIASCO–Was it the way the matter was handled by the authorities–the uniformed and not? the failed negotiations? the way media broadcast it to the world? the way people placed blame on the country’s leadership? the point of desperation of many people–placing justice in their own hands with their distorted, perverted minds?

It will be so hard to sleep tonight knowing that many lives were forever changed by a police officer who saw it fit to involve tourists in his quest for “justice.” I saw how his actions made his old father cry like a child, his brother forcibly dragged by policemen to a waiting squad car, the media fighting over getting the scoop, CNN and BBC covering the entire event for the whole world to witness, and the attempts of the SWAT team to end the hostage crisis until a couple of tear gas canisters were thrown inside the bus–the final end of THE END of the hostage taker’s life. Aside from Capt. Mendoza’s body hanging lifeless like a broken tree limb from the bus’ shattered doors, the one image that really made an impact was that of a crying and visibly shaken Chinese tourist being lifted out of the bus after the hostage crisis ended. It’s a hard to shake off that image. Like I said, sleeping won’t come swiftly tonight. I bet for the Chinese lady, sleeping won’t come easily for hundreds or thousands of nights to come.

The only comforting thing to note that in the end, there were still several hostages alive.

Why is this happening to our country? SAD! SAD! SAD!

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