Inside A Siege

What happened on November 29, 2007 — from the unexpected walkout at a Makati courthouse, to the siege of a hotel, to the forcible entry of a tank into the plush Peninsula Manila lobby — is part of our widely publicized recent history. What happened inside the hotel is another story.

On the morning of Thursday, November 29, 2007, Monzie Uy contemplated not reporting for work. She had developed a cold the day before and figured a good rest would curb its progress. But with the Peninsula Manila’s entire executive committee and the rest of the hotel’s department heads – from the general manager to the head of security, about 50 people in all – out on a team building exercise in Tagaytay, it fell upon Monzie, the hotel’s Director for Customer Service, to act as duty manager for the day.

As duty manager, it was her job to hold the fort. Little did she know, as she drove to work early Thursday, that she would have to literally hold the fort.

In a country where the general populace has come to expect the unexpected, and strange events are often chalked up to a growing “Only in the Philippines” list and promptly forgotten, the events of November 29 are especially bizarre in that, as a whole, it felt like a case of déja vu. It was a condensed, more action-packed version of something that had happened before, albeit with a very different ending. Antonio Trillanes, who, as a soldier, had been at the center of the 2003 Oakwood siege, was once again embroiled in a similar situation. More or less the same cast of characters, nearly the same plotline, but a different hotel.

This time around, the country watched with bated breath as the Peninsula Manila, a luxury five-star hotel in the heart of the Makati Central Business District, on the intersection of main thoroughfares Makati Avenue and Ayala Avenue, became the stage of a surreal showdown.

Strange days

All systems appeared normal on the morning of November 29 at the Peninsula – as usual, several function rooms were booked for daytime corporate events, and the food outlets buzzed with the regular lunchtime crowd. In the hotel’s grand lobby, with National Artist Napoleon Abueva’s Sunburst sculpture hanging majestic overhead, faint piped in music mingled with the clink of teacups on saucers and the soft chatter of midday guests.

At approximately 11 a.m., Monzie’s sister was on the cell phone, informing her of the latest news: Sen. Trillanes, facing trial for charges in relation to the Oakwood incident, had unceremoniously exited his hearing at the Makati court adjacent to city hall and, along with Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, was now marching down Makati Avenue with a throng of Magdalo soldiers, high profile civilian supporters that included former Vice President Teofisto Guingona and former University of the Philippines president Francisco Nemenzo, some high ranking members of the clergy, as well as members of the press.

A quick peek outside from the vantage point of the 11th floor Peninsula Suite at the hotel’s Makati Tower revealed that the marching group was less than a hundred meters away, and drawing closer.

Peninsula Manila general manager David Batchelor was in the middle of completing a team building exercise when Monzie’s call came through. Although he had previously been based in Hong Kong, where such periodic outbursts of political dissatisfaction are unheard of, Batchelor has been a resident of the Philippines for the past six years and has come to terms with the fact that the country has its attendant surprises.

The urgent but calmly delivered report did not strike him as incredibly surprising, but that “it was happening at our doorstep” was cause for alarm. The last time he had supervised an entire hotel evacuation was during the 2003 Oakwood power grab attempt, and on the morning of November 29, his first instinct was “to ensure human safety” by ordering the full cooperation of the hotel staff before considering an evacuation. Within minutes, he was on his way back to the hotel along with a few other key officers.

“At that point, no one knew where they were headed,” recounts Monzie, but already, the sight of long firearms made safety a top priority.

She then called up security, and a security plan quickly kicked into gear. All the hotel entrances were closed off and sealed, including the entrance to Nielsen’s along Makati Avenue, the hotel’s buffet outlet. Before anyone knew it, the glass doors were broken down and the marching crowd spilled into the hotel.

Amid the confusion, she managed to glean what the group wanted: a function room in which to hold a press conference.

Public relations secretary Grace Lim remembers emerging into the hotel lobby to find soldiers posted at the foot of the grand staircase, the entrances and other strategic areas of the hotel. Her first instinct was to demand an explanation for the blatant display of weapons, and promptly took the soldiers to task.

“They assured me they meant no harm,” recounts Lim, “and I assured them that, being Filipino, I knew that. And perhaps so did the other Filipinos in the lobby. But we had foreign guests who might not readily understand this kind of situation.” She asked them to conceal their weapons, and while they did not fully comply, they lowered their guns to a less combative position.

Surprise guests

Meanwhile, Dominador Alejandro Jr., known to the Pen family as “Aji,” was doing his usual rounds on the second floor of the hotel that he has served for the past 31 years. As Banquet Operations chief, he was checking in on the simultaneous functions of the morning when two men in civilian clothes and backpacks approached him with an urgency that was both alarming and disorienting.

“Dalawa silang maskulado na sumisigaw ‘Rooms! Rooms!” narrates Aji who, even in his confused state, struggled to be accommodating. His polite queries of, “Ano po yung kailangan nila?” were met with more of the same cryptic but demanding chant. “Rooms! Rooms! Trillanes! Trillanes!”

He became even more confused when the name of the controversial senator came up, but within minutes, the puzzle solved itself. “May narinig nalang ako na kumakalampag paakyat,” he recounts, describing the large crowd thunderously clambering up the hotel’s wide staircase leading to the second floor. Among the frontliners was Sen. Trillanes.

The entire party burst into the Conservatory, and finding it full of wide-eyed associates of an insurance company, retreated in a huff in search of another function room.

Even at that point, it was still not clear to anyone exactly what was going on, and all that the hotel staff knew was that, while the day no longer called for normal operations, there were hotel guests whose meals had been interrupted and who had to be assured, convincingly, of their safety. Most of the guests in the food outlets were quick to comply while others took some time to get over their bewilderment.

“It was of primary importance to maintain composure and calm so as not to alarm the guests, and to prevent panic,” says Monzie.

“We couldn’t explain to them what was going on,” Aji says, “because we weren’t sure ourselves.” Taking orders via cell phone from the general manager, in urgent transit back to Makati, the hotel staff began juggling tasks: that of calmly informing the guests to kindly finish their meals and vacate the premises, and of giving Trillanes and company what they asked for.

“The hotel policy in such instances is not to engage,” explains Capt. Raul H. Mangubat, the hotel’s Chief Security Officer who, like the general manager, was en route back to the city. “In the interest of safety, we fully cooperate.”

It is an unspoken rule in the hotel that, in the event of a crisis, guests’ safety comes first, and it is a code that seems embedded in the genetic makeup of the staff. As the initial commotion gradually developed into a standoff, their cell phones were ringing nonstop – from the executive committee calling for updates on the situation, to family and friends begging them to leave the premises.

Monzie says she would not have blamed anyone in her staff had they chosen to flee the scene for the safety of home, especially when government forces clamped down on the area, so she is grateful and eternally awed that not one member of the staff left his or her post. It was a time, in fact, to rise to a difficult occasion of, as Aji puts it, “protecting their home.”

It was, from the onset, proving to be a challenge. Several guests were posing for photos with those presumed to be Magdalo soldiers, while others, failing to recognize the urgency, were reluctant to rush through afternoon tea.

While the Peninsula staff are no strangers to crisis situations arising from coup attempts or sieges – in 1989, as a coup d’etat was being waged from the nearby Intercon Hotel, the Pen had evacuated all its guests, as it did again in 2003 during the Oakwood uprising – but never before had it been the object of such a direct threat.

As for the surprise guests, they were accorded the courtesy the hotel extends to all its guests. “It wasn’t exactly the most conventional manner of checking in,” quips Noel C. Silva, the hotel’s Food and Beverage Manager. “But there they were, in the hotel. We had to treat them as guests.”

Holding the Fort

Myrna Aldeguer, secretary to the Financial Comptroller, hurried upstairs from her basement office the minute she was informed of what was essentially a break-in. In an effort to assist Monzie, Aldeguer found herself swept in a tense and frenzied tide. “Malakas ang boses ko eh, so sumisigaw talaga ako doon para makarating sila sa Rizal Room,” she shares, narrating how she attempted, by the sheer volume of her voice, to steer the group to a second floor function room.

Before she knew it, the doors were closed to keep out the media, and she found herself in a small boardroom with the day’s most wanted figures, all of them settling down around the long table for a meeting.

Gripped with mounting fear, Aldeguer managed a soft squeak, saying, “Sir, I’m still here,” hoping she would be let out.

The reply from Sen. Trillanes was a little unexpected. After apologizing for the inconvenience, he enjoined her to have a seat.

“It’s okay, Sir,” she had replied with a small, nervous laugh. “I don’t want to join the meeting.”

To ease the tension in the room, Aldeguer engaged one Lt. Sg. James Layug in small talk.

“Ano ba ho ang gusto niyo?” she politely inquired.

He allegedly replied with the same list of demands that had been read on air during the press conference that followed.

“Eh paano kung hindi ‘yan mangyari?” she gently pressed, and he had reportedly said, “Basta di kami aalis dito. Dito lang kami.”

“Paano naman ho kami?” she asked, and he casually, albeit politely, replied, “Dito lang din po kayo.”

In hindsight, Aldeguer says she never felt that the group laying siege to the hotel would hurt them, but during that moment of the brief exchange, she was far from reassured. It seemed to her like it was going to be a long night.

Meanwhile, beside her, Aji was preparing for the worst. “I thought to myself, This is it,” he said, thinking that those demands were never going to be met. It also didn’t take a genius to figure out that the 20 or so armed Magdalo men stood little chance against a whole battalion of government soldiers. And Aji’s primary worry was that of innocent people getting caught in the crossfire.

Along with Aji, Aldeguer remained inside the room, attending to the group’s requests. When they asked for a second room, the Guerrero Room was made available. When they asked for TV sets in order to watch the news, TV sets were produced. When the group asked for water, water was promptly brought in. Later on, as lunchtime came to pass, an aide of the senator requested for a snack for the group, and clubhouse sandwiches were served. The last thing they requested from Aldeguer was for red ribbons, and those were delivered as well from the hotel flower shop. These were later worn as armbands.

The deadline on their minds

It had been decided that the two coasters ferrying the returning executive committee would be used to transport guests to other hotels. Art department head Jose Badelles escorted a whole group to a nearby hotel, but was not allowed to return to the Peninsula’s premises.

Meanwhile, the government had set a 3 p.m. deadline for the surrender of Sen. Trillanes, Brig. Gen. Lim, and those in their party.

Peninsula general manager Batchelor, security chief Capt. Mangubat and public relations director Mariano Garchi-torena arrived at the scene at approximately 1:45 p.m. to find that the perimeter had been cordoned off and surrounded by government troops.

“After taking stock of the situation, I went to talk to Sen. Trillanes,” says Batchelor, “and he told me that his intentions were peaceful…but that his stay might be protracted.”

The evacuation was systematic and smooth, and Batchelor and Garchitorena describe the atmosphere in the hotel, up to that point, as being busy but manageable.

Past experience shows that deadlines generally pass without an exchange of fire, but Capt. Mangubat wasn’t taking any chances. “You must always think two steps ahead,” he says. “A deadline had been set, and with no moves to come to a resolution, one had to anticipate an assault.”

Monzie describes her sprint out of the hotel as “the fastest ever in my life.” A group of them had managed to make it to her car, but because a tank was blocking the back exit, they had to flee once again on foot.

With a small group of media folk, Aji was hurrying out of the hotel via the swimming pool area when the first gunshots rang out. They had to duck, and fall on their chests, to keep out of harm’s way.

A group of Magdalo soldiers blocking the main entrance began refusing to let anyone leave the building, so general manager Batchelor and several hotel officers, the last remaining of the hotel personnel, had to rush to find an alternative way out.

As Batchelor remembers it, there was a sudden surge of journalists rushing to get out, and all of a sudden, the lobby, previously crowded and now nearly deserted, turned somewhat eerie.

The small band of hotel officers hurried down a web of narrow hallways into the hotel’s back offices, in the basement. “We thought of holing up in the Pen Cafe,” narrates Silva. “It’s the cafeteria for the staff. When we got there, panting, lo and behold we find a group of press people casually having coffee. We had to tell them what was happening.”

Eventually, in the midst of the surreal and unexpected turn of events, the group made it out of the service entrance, into the gray and drizzling afternoon, and onto a pre-arranged command post at Ayala Corporation’s Tower One. Everyone, that is, except for Capt. Mangubat, who retreated to his office in the basement and rolled up his sleeves to man the hotel’s only operational post left for the day, as something that resembled war raged upstairs.

“When I saw that group of journalists rush out,“ says Batchelor, “I knew something was going to happen.”

A tank in the hotel lobby: Only in the Philippines

When public relations director Garchitorena – whom everyone calls Garch – returned to the hotel late in the evening, hours after a tank had rammed through the main lobby doors and Sen. Trillanes waved the white flag, the scene was nothing short of devastating.

“It was a near-total wreck,” he says. The rest of the staff felt similarly heartbroken at the sight of their hotel in the aftermath of the day’s events.

But as a tank in a five-star hotel lobby remains, so far, an “Only in the Philippines” oddity, so is the capacity of the Filipino to bounce back from a crisis – with lightning speed, with wisdom, with grace, and with jokes.

The Pen staff are no different. Within days, they managed to restore the hotel lobby to its old grandeur, almost, as one headline put it, “like (the events of November 29) never happened.”

While most of the staff have unique and distinct experiences of the day, punctuated with comic and wry side comments, all of them tell it now with the same tone: that they had, following a deeply ingrained instinct for teamwork, managed to turn a crisis into their finest hour, where not a single person was hurt on their watch, even while their home was besieged.

A group photo, taken shortly before the hotel’s reopening at 3 p.m. on December 3, four days after the siege, reveals the pride they all feel and embody – five-star service, even in the face of a crisis.