A deadly mix

I was trying to figure out what went wrong in last week’s hostage drama that ended with a number of foreign tourists and the hostage-taker dead when I stumbled upon some parallelisms between the infamous Mendiola Massacre 23 years ago and this recent tragedy.



I shivered and had goose bumps all over when I realized that on January 22, 1987 when 13 peasant marchers were shot dead on Mendiola bridge, the man in charge was Gen. Alfredo Lim, then chief of the Western Police District. The officer would become Manila’s chief executive.



The president then was an Aquino.



Last week, no less than the Manila police director admitted that he was taking orders from Mayor Lim as head of the supposed crisis management committee that supervised the hostage-taking of a busload of tourists by demented cop, Sr. Insp. Rolando Mendoza.



At the massacre in Mendiola, Lim called the shots but he vehemently denied giving the orders to shoot down the unarmed peasants. History would prove that the shootings were a fatal mistake.



History would repeat itself 23 years later when Lim, being the man in charge of the August 23 hostage crisis, gave orders that eventually caused the deaths of tourists from Hongkong. These orders include the arrest of Mendoza’s brother, Gregorio, that drew the ire of the hostage taker.



The president now is an Aquino.



Judging from these separate events, I have strong reason to believe that Aquino and Lim are quite a deadly mix. Don’t you think? I just hope that the buck stops here.


We simply cannot afford to see more deadly mistakes in the future.