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Updated Tuesday, August 31, 2010 10:48 am TWN, MANILA, Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network

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Philippines can recover from siege tragedy by facing truth

The order is in keeping with Lim's official persona — the law enforcer who does not hesitate to use the iron fist of the law, the lack of velvet glove be damned. We do not know to what extent Lim is culpable, but the way forward includes investigating the mayor who gave the pivotal order.

The criticism against media coverage of the hostage-taking and its unfortunate denouement has only increased in the past week, fueled now by the attempts of many journalists to provide either a defense of their conduct or at least fact-based accounting.

These attempts must continue, but it is time for news organizations and media associations to come together and begin the process of shaping a consensus on the limits of live coverage.

The alternative is grim. In the future, a less media-friendly government may impose legal restrictions on what, after all, are self-regulating institutions.

The Aquino administration must learn to trust the fundamentals, and we are not talking only of the economy.

Some of the doom-mongering commentary after Aug. 23 aluded to the country's sick-man-of-Asia status, inadvertently or deliberately ignorant of the fact — and it is a fact, recorded in news articles in international publications — that in the last couple of years the Philippines has gained new respect, next to Indonesia, for its steady growth, its generally moderate politics and its passionate commitment to democracy.

The fallout from the Mendoza massacre is real, but it should not make the government lose sight of the improved fundamentals.

Above all, the way forward requires the people of the Philippines to trust themselves. The Aug. 23 incident was not the first time they have suffered grievously from the delusions or the incompetence or the feeble-mindedness of some of their own countrymen.

But they have always recovered, from mercenary collaborators during the Japanese occupation, from the butchers of martial law, from the inordinately greedy fraudsters of the previous administration.

By pursuing the truth, and then focusing on improving competence, they can recover, too, from last week's macabre drama of deadly incompetents.

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