Elite AFP, PNP units give Aquino a show

MANILA, Philippines—Three huge explosions shook the white-and-blue bus parked under a tree, ripping off its door and shattering two of its windows.

In the cloud of smoke, helmeted commandos in bullet-proof vests stormed through the broken door. Others climbed through a window. Moments later, “hostages” scrambled out of the bus. Inside, the “hostage-taker” lay dead.

The “rescue operation” was over in three minutes, without hitches. President Benigno Aquino, watching on television monitors about 100 meters away, seemed impressed, maybe thinking that the Aug. 23 real-life hostage drama at Rizal Park could have ended without bloodshed if the police had been as efficient.

Mr. Aquino saw a demonstration of the capability of the Philippine National Police (PNP) Special Action Force (SAF) during exercises staged for his benefit at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City on Thursday.

On Friday, he watched another “rescue operation,” this time at sea, carried out by the Navy Special Operations Groups (Navsog) at Sangley Point in Cavite.

Later, he witnessed a similar hostage-rescue exercise during a visit to Fort Magsaysay in Palayan City, Nueva Ecija.

Better equipment

The Cavite exercises simulated a situation where a gang of hijackers had seized a luxury yacht off Manila Bay and Navy teams, on rubber attack boats, encircled the yacht, clambered aboard and overpowered the gunmen.

“Yes,” Mr. Aquino told reporters at Sangley Point when asked if he was satisfied with what he saw. “I think you have seen how capable our people are.”

But he also said that the rescue teams should be given newer equipment to effectively deal with extreme crisis situations, like the Aug. 23 hostage drama in which eight Hong Kong tourists were killed after their bus was hijacked by dismissed policeman Rolando Mendoza. The hostage-taker was himself killed.

Wish list

“I’ll be getting a lot of wish lists,” Mr. Aquino said. “Yesterday from the SAF, today from the Navy, later I guess from the Army.”

“A lot of these items are not impossible to get. They should be given the necessary tools. The equipment they have is already too old. Don’t send your soldiers to a fight without the needed tools.”

Mr. Aquino has announced the formation of an elite unit composed of both military and police personnel who would be able to respond to crisis nationwide.

“The forces are there. It’s really a question of merging operationally the organizations,” he said.

Command structure

But while the Armed Forces and the PNP have to be distinct from each other, with the PNP remaining civilian in character, “there would be times that you would need all of them,” he added.

He said the command structure of a joint military and police elite force was being worked out.

“He seemed happy with what he saw,” the SAF head, Chief Supt. Catalino Cuy, said after the Camp Bagong Diwa exercises. He added that Mr. Aquino even congratulated them.

Mr. Aquino later told reporters that he himself wondered why SAF was not utilized during the Quirino Grandstand standoff.

SAF was actually also used in the rescue operation but it was Manila’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team that was at the forefront of the bungled operation.

Using explosives

“We used explosives to break the glass panel,” Cuy said, recounting what happened during the SAF demonstration. He said the glass windows of the bus used in the exercises were made of the same material as those on the bus seized by Mendoza.

“We used enough explosives to break the glass in order for our team to gain access inside the bus and, at the same time, not hurt the hostages,” Cuy added.

During the Rizal Park ordeal, Manila’s SWAT took long, agonizing minutes before breaking into the tourist bus, as viewers on national and global television watched them pound its windows in frustration using a sledgehammer.

Needed for mobility

During Thursday’s demonstration, the SAF used real people and mannequins for hostages.

Mr. Aquino also viewed an exhibit of the equipment SAF now has.

Cuy said he took the opportunity to tell the President about the SAF’s “wish list.”

“I told him about the things we need for mobility, like helicopter, things like that ... He was very interested ... and he was also very supportive of what we still need to procure,” Cuy said.

“We need a new generation or better-model equipment in order to [match] the status of the special police units of other countries.”

Norman Bordadora, Tina Santos, Rem Zamora, Phil. Daily Inquirer