On August 23, the world witnessed a horrifyingly botched attempt to rescue Hong Kong hostages held inside a tour bus in Manila. Immediate concerns were for the safety of the hostages, sitting in terror behind those red curtains inside the bus, beyond communication. Once we knew that eight were dead, the Hong Kong public grieved for their fellow citizens, hoping that their show of support would alleviate the pain of the immediate family and friends of the victims. Their desire to rationalise this inexplicable tragedy by pinning down responsibility is understandable.
But while some in Hong Kong were most directly affected, the whole Philippine population will also have looked upon this day as a tragedy for the nation. Its Incident Investigation and Review Committee called it a 'tipping point' which provided a mirror for all the nation's social ills: 'A man with a perceived injustice and oppression done against him, so common in Philippine society, cornered and forced to a murderous and insane mission, the incompetence and insubordination of a police commander, the aggravating vigilantism of a politician, the disregard for the proper use of a crisis system by the crisis responders, the reckless irresponsibility of media people and their total abhorrence to any form of restraint in the practice of their trade. These are our own ghosts that we should now face squarely if we are not to repeat August 23, 2010'.
In conclusion, the committee wrote that it 'ended up looking into the nation's soul, and find that we are all equally guilty of pulling the trigger of the gunman'.
The current debate - into which even our chief executive, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, has waded - over whether certain officials should face criminal or merely administrative charges misses some key points. No amount of finger-pointing and retribution will bring back the dead, nor repair a torn society. Those officials, despite their gross ineptitude, did not pull the trigger. It was a 55-year-old former policeman, Rolando Mendoza, who pulled the trigger. And as the IIRC report noted, we all played a part in allowing society to decay to the extend that it created a monster. In Hong Kong, domestic helpers, many of them Filipino, help turn the wheels of our service-based economy, allowing professionals to work more efficiently. And yet our administration has shown so little interest in developments in the Philippines that the presidential team around Benigno Aquino could not appreciate the significance of a phone call from a man named Tsang.
No doubt there must have been legal reasons for Philippine Justice Secretary Leila De Lima to recommend criminal investigations, and criminal charges against Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim. Equally, Aquino may have had compelling reasons to believe that the consequences of filing criminal charges, only for them to fall foul of strict juridical standards, would have been even more disastrous. It would be of greater concern if the difference of opinion between De Lima and the president were a matter not of legal interpretation but of political manoeuvring, another example of justice being a mere commodity for the rich and powerful - the phenomenon that may have driven Mendoza to pull the trigger. Aquino has suggested improving crisis management and training for rescue teams. He will have to look far deeper into the institutions of government if he wants to find the next ticking bomb who may take out his despair on another group of holidaymakers.