Out for humiliation

The aggressive questioning by some Hong Kong journalists of President Benigno Aquino III during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Indonesia could have gone a lot worse if not for the timely handling of information officers assigned to the event.

One need only remember that incident in December 2008 when an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at former US president George Bush, shouting “this is a farewell kiss, you dog,” during the press conference and missing his target by a few inches.

The incident isn’t exactly unique, though the outburst may be understood by sympathizers and critics of American imperialism. Back home, Manila tour guide and street artist Carlos Celdran made a spectacle of himself when he showed up at a Mass and did his “Padre Damaso” shtick at the height of the congressional debate over the then Reproductive Health (RH) bill.

Three years after the infamous Luneta hostage crisis in which the national media, specifically the broadcast media was held to account for its coverage of the incident that provoked the hostage taker to take lives, Hong Kong has apparently never forgotten the tragedy.

The questions posed by the journalists all centered on whether President Aquino will apologize to Hong Kong as a result of the incident. The President stated quite clearly that the government has nothing to apologize for its handling of the hostage crisis and laid the blame on the hostage-taker.

The Chinese animosity may have been reflected in that brief on-flight altercation between the husband of President Aquino’s sister Ballsy Aquino Cruz and a Chinese travel writer in 2011, a year after the hostage tragedy.

Going back to that Apec incident, the call by some international media groups to protest the Indonesian government’s decision to revoke the media passes of the Chinese reporters should be taken into context, considering that the Indonesian government didn’t bar these reporters from covering the event.

But the aggressive questioning, nay, badgering of the President with shouted questions is another story. Like that Iraqi journalist who threw shoes at former US president George Bush, any perceived security threat to a country’s leader would be dealt with decisively by any government hosting a major global event.

By dogging President Aquino with questions on a three-year-old tragedy, the Hong Kong journalists were no different from the militant protesters who take every opportunity to humiliate a targeted public official to advance their own agenda.

And the Apec event afforded them that chance to humiliate President Aquino anew. Would such an incident occur once the Apec is hosted by the Philippines in 2015? Maybe the Cebu City government can learn something from this incident.