Immature

It was a snub. We have no choice but to accept it, head bowed.

More as an afterthought, the Aquino administration decided to send a top-level delegation headed by the vice-president and the foreign secretary to Hong Kong and Beijing. What this delegation was supposed to do, other than repeat the apology Manila already expressed, is not clear.

Both Beijing and Hong Kong rejected the delegation, originally scheduled to have left last Thursday. Both authorities politely but firmly said they would rather wait for the final results of a thorough investigation into the bloody incident.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong authorities rubbed in the lessons in proper official behavior as it sent in doctors and a hospital plane to evacuate the victims, held solemn ceremonies for them at the airport and called for public mourning on the day that followed. The highest officials of the territory were present and formally garbed in all the ceremonies underscoring public and official grief for what happened. This is a state that truly feels for its people.

We might have averted the snub if our government officials behaved in a more mature and professional way. The Aquino government ought not to have publicly announced a delegation was being sent to Beijing and Hong Kong without first consulting with the counterparties. That is simply not the way high-level diplomacy is done. We should have first cleared the matter with them quietly through backdoor channels before making the public announcement of the delegation being sent.

Whoever is responsible for this idea of unilaterally announcing the sending of this delegation is as incompetent as the police unit that assaulted the bus last Monday. It was an idea driven by the Palace’s obsession with damage-control and public relations, not by diplomacy. This is simply another botched operation.

Vice-President Binay and Secretary Romulo have their bags packed. But they have nowhere to go. They are, like the rest of the nation, stranded and humiliated by this fiasco.

The anger against the Philippines seething in the streets of Hong Kong and elsewhere is understandable. The incompetence of our police resulting in wanton loss of life is just the tip of the iceberg. The incompetence of our entire officialdom in the course of the crisis and in its aftermath is, ultimately, the reason why there is so much international contempt for us right now.

According to Hong Kong newspaper reports, HK chief executive Donald Tsang tried calling President Aquino twice last Monday — first at four in the afternoon and then at 8 in the evening. In both instances, he did not get through to the Philippine president.

He should have not been doing that in the first place. It was President Aquino who should have called him, early in the day when it was clear that the hostages were mainly Hong Kong nationals, to assure his counterpart that every effort was being done to ensure the safety of the victims.

When Aquino did not call (as he should have, by diplomatic dictate), it was Tsang himself who had to set protocol aside and make the call himself. There was injury there and then.

To make things worse, the call was taken by Sec. Ricky Carandang, one of the two-headed hydra that is the President’s public relations team. According to accounts, Carandang told the caller President Aquino would call back as soon as he gets a full report on the incident. He, in effect, told a foreign head of government, “Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

When Tsang initiated the call, it was not to get a technical report. It is what head of governments do: get in touch with each other and share concerns in a sensitive and dangerous moment involving another country’s nationals. Tsang made the call as a gesture to his citizens that, as patriarch, he was doing everything to ensure his people’s safety. When the call was not taken, that was an insult.

Carandang did not realize the gravity of his error in not forwarding the call to his principal. To date, it seems he is not ready to accept responsibility for this diplomatic fiasco.

And where was President Aquino during all this time? It was only he, as commander-in-chief who might have ordered the better-equipped and better-trained counter-terrorist units of the AFP to deploy to the scene just in case. He did not have to micro-manage the negotiations. But it was only he who could order the deployment of more competent back-up from the military.

True, the hostages were taken by a plain madman. But this plain madman was armed with an assault rifle. He was, for all intents and purposes, a terrorist who should have been neutralized at first opportunity.

To make things worse, Aquino finally materialized on public television before his shocked and distressed nation four hours after the shooting began, way past midnight when many Filipinos were trying to get fitful sleep. The Palace owes the public a minute-by-minute accounting of the President’s time all through Monday as the crisis rolled to its terrible climax.

When the President finally appeared on television past midnight, and when he made that useless tour of the shattered bus, he sported what many foreigners thought to be a smirk on his face. That only aggravated the anger.

No amount of presidential apologies for that “misunderstood smile” will suffice. The nation’s leader should have suppressed it in the first place while everybody else mourned.

Only two things have been done right so far, and not by the highest authorities. The family of the hostage-taker apologized to the world for what their kin had caused. Former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took the initiative to help relieve the situation by personally writing the leaders of China and Hong Kong, both close acquaintances, apologizing for the current government’s obvious immaturity.