Means to an end

Our nation is so bereft of heroes that some quarters are trying to make a martyr out of deranged hostage taker Armando Ducat.

On national TV, the publicity hound denounced corruption and lamented widespread poverty and lack of education.

But there is no dearth of people making those denunciations around the country every day, in various ways. These people don’t go around brandishing heavy weapons and explosives and holding children hostage.

There are so many things wrong with this government, so many things wrong with this country, and a long list of ills that can be denounced.

If all of us would dramatize our grievances by seizing hostages, and then get a slap on the wrist for breaking the law, we are inviting anarchy.

Ducat’s charity work with the impoverished children of the Parola compound in Tondo is surely appreciated. But being a philanthropist does not give anyone a license to come unhinged and become a public nuisance.

There is a punishment for every crime. The state must not shirk its duty of enforcing the law and showing that crime does not pay.

Let anyone get away with murder — or hostage-taking and illegal possession of explosives — and we will see copycats mushrooming all over the archipelago. And next time the hostages might get bullets or grenade shrapnel instead of ice cream and P500.

* * *

Not surprisingly, the parents of the 26 children held hostage by Ducat are not pressing charges against him.

This should not stop the police from pursuing criminal charges against him for serious illegal detention, which is not a private crime and can be prosecuted with the state as the complainant.

He is also liable for illegal possession of two grenades, an Uzi assault rifle and a .45-caliber pistol.

The penalties should be heavier for possessing those weapons while an election gun ban is in effect.

Additional charges should be filed for breach of the peace, or alarm and scandal, or whatever criminal charges are filed against lunatics who use children for self-aggrandizing publicity gimmicks. Ducat held hostage not just those children but an entire city, where business ground to a halt for an entire day because the area around City Hall where the crisis unfolded had to be cleared just in case the grenades exploded.

While they’re at it, law enforcers should make sure they find out where the loony got his weapons. This shows you how effective our gun ban is: a private citizen is walking around with an assault rifle, a handgun and two grenades, and he even knows how to take out the firing pins.

Yesterday Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson, who is trailing in surveys on the senatorial race, spent much of the morning denying that he engineered the hostage incident to boost his ratings. He also defended his distribution of P500 to each of the hostages, which doesn’t break election rules since the children aren’t of voting age.

Apart from Ducat and his partner in crime, Cesar Augustus Carbonell, the cops who bungled the handling of the hostage situation must also be penalized.

That circus around the hostage site showed an appalling lack of police control over the situation. Even traffic rerouting around City Hall was chaotic. The Manila Police District has 3,000 cops. They must have all been watching TV — or jostling to be caught by TV cameras at the site — throughout the entire hostage situation.

* * *

Ducat was emboldened because the first time he staged a hostage incident, he was given a slap on the wrist.

In November 1989, Ducat and one of his construction workers, also brandishing two grenades with the firing pins off, held hostage the parish priest of San Roque church in Sta. Cruz, Manila together with a church assistant.

Ducat wanted full payment for a church construction project. He accused the priest of pocketing the money for the payment.

He was booked for illegal detention and possession of explosives, but the charges were dropped when the priest did not press charges and the grenades turned out to be duds.

Now Ducat has struck again, and is promising to do more mischief if ever he is freed. If he keeps up his headline-grabbing antics, he might have a better chance in politics after losing in two elections.

The only way to make sure there is no next time is to make Ducat pay for breaking the law.

No matter how noble the cause, and how much the nation may be in agreement with Ducat’s grievances, hostage taking, like coup d’etat and mutiny, must never be tolerated.

If we are going to go by the Machiavellian principle that the end justifies the means, all the crooks in government and the right-wing extremists in the military will justify their criminal acts as necessary evils on the way to making this nation great.

A despot like Ferdinand Marcos could rise up once again and justify authoritarianism as a means to a glorious end.

The alleviation of poverty and hunger will be invoked by every burglar and pickpocket.

If a law is broken, the lawbreaker must pay for it.

There are ways of drawing public attention to the concerns raised by Ducat. Grabbing hostages should never be one of them.