EDITORIAL – When to talk, when to shut up

What is Malacañang doing? Why are its spokesmen having a field day commenting on the Golan Heights incident in which Filipino troops assigned as United Nations peacekeeping forces managed to escape to safety after an earlier encounter with Syrian rebels. That incident has spawned controversy after the Philippine armed forces chief of staff claimed the soldiers disobeyed an order of their Indian commander to surrender their weapons to the rebels.

At the time the Malacañang spokesmen started commenting on the issue, it had yet to receive the full official report from the armed forces. And judging by the demeanor of the Philippine armed forces chief on television, he is hardly one you would expect to give a truly objective report, at least not after he has already prejudged the incident as something heroic and worthy of being made into a movie.

Armed Forces chief General Gregorio Pio Catapang can be forgiven if he felt ecstatic that his men managed to outwit the Syrian rebels and escaped with their lives. But he only had their word for it about what really happened. This is not to say our Filipino troops lied. And neither is it expected of Catapang not to take the side of his men.

But he should be the face of decorum and sobriety in the midst of an incident that could potentially give not just the Philippines a bad rap but the United Nations as well. And this is not even to mention that the side of the Indian commander had not been heard at the time. As it turned out, the Indian UN peacekeeping forces commander has denied having ordered the Filipinos to surrender their firearms.

Now we have a situation where it has become the word of the Indian UN peacekeeping forces commander who was on the ground in the war zone and our Philippine armed forces chief who was just in his airconditioned office in Manila. It would have been easy to take Catapang's side except that he doesn't inspire much confidence, especially following his television appearance in the aftermath of what he described as "the great escape," a take on that great Steve McQueen movie.

In front of a live nationwide tv audience, Catapang did what no other self-respecting and well-disciplined chief of a country's armed forces would do. He was obviously joking, but that is precisely what we mean by self-respect and discipline or the lack of it. Before the cameras, Catapang said he would send his men beer and then asked the troop leader if he wanted their "exploits" to be made into a movie and which actor the troop leader wanted to play his part.

He then broke into a guffaw when told the name of the actor by the soldier who obviously was only too pleased to humor his boss. Then, turning serious, he told his tv audience what the UN Indian commander supposedly ordered, even before he had all the facts. And this is the situation to which the Malacañang spokesmen have now gleefully jumped into. Instead on keeping off a clearly operational matter, the nitwits are dragging Malacañang, and the country, into an international mess.