EDITORIAL - Malaysia next

It is not easy to lose loved ones. And so the anger and frustration felt by relatives and friends of passengers on board a missing Malaysia Airlines jet is understandable. It has been more than three weeks since Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board and the authorities can offer no clues as to its fate.

It is believed the plane, bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, crashed into the southern Indian Ocean after making an inexplicable u-turn an hour into its flight. But in the absence of any concrete evidence that it crashed (nothing has been found as of this writing), hope continues to flicker, no matter how faintly.

And it is this hope, and the absence of anything, that has fueled the anger and frustration, directed mainly at Malaysian authorities who, unused to being in a critical light, are handling the situation badly. And that is why, at this stage, Malaysia should start learning a little from the Philippines.

On August 23, 2010 a disgruntled police officer took over a tourist bus and held hostage the 25 people on board, including 20 tourists and a tour guide from Hong Kong. A botched rescue attempt by Philippine police resulted in the deaths of eight of the Hong Kong tourists, and the hostage-taker.

Not only was the rescue attempt a showcase of everything that can go wrong in such a situation, a clear coverup also ensued when officials responsible for the fiasco and recommended for sanctions were silently let off the hook because they were close to the president. Consequently, calls for an apology went unheeded.

Malaysia, therefore, could find itself in a similar situation -- it has handled the MH370 incident badly, not because it had no clues but because its evasiveness and lack of openness gave rise to suspicions of holding back, possibly to cover up.

Many of the passengers on board were also Chinese, as in fact many of the very angry and frustrated are relatives and friends of the Chinese passengers. At this point they are just angry and frustrated. If Malaysia looks back at the Philippine experience, it should start preparing for Chinese demands for an apology.

The Philippines did not apologize and Hong Kong retaliated by slapping it with a number of sanctions, ranging from economic to diplomatic to outright physical attacks of Philippine nationals in that city. The Philippines, however, simply turned the other cheek on these. But will Malaysia?