DAVAO CITY - The national government is eyeing to spend at least P250 million to retrain the police in handling a hostage crisis such as what happened in the Quirino Grandstand last Aug. 23 that led to the death of eight Hong Kong nationals. This was disclosed by Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo during his visit to the Police Regional Office in Camp Catitipan, this city, last Wednesday. However, Robredo said this is just a proposal that has yet to be presented to the House of Representatives. "The source has already been identified," Robredo told reporters, referring to the earmarked budget that would be used to acquire rescue and response equipment. The secretary recently vowed to step down from his post if the investigative committee points to his incompetence in the handling of the Manila hostage fiasco.
He said he should not be judged prematurely without setting straight the facts first. "I think it might be premature without getting the assessment of the authority," he said, explaining that the Quirino Grandstand incident showed how authorities displayed their courage and exposed their incompetence at the same time. Robredo assured that the government will recover from the crisis. However, he could not say how the government would be able to clean its tainted image of incompetence thrown by critics here and abroad. "You know we can recover not by what we say but what we do. We can't just say without showing what we can do," he said.
