No preferred outcome (Part II)

published 26 Nov 2007

On the day of the Glorietta 2 explosion, some politicians jumped at the opportunity to air their respective takes on the incident.

There were also calls for the conduct of an “independent” investigation, a task that the Makati Business Development Council, an umbrella organization of various business groups, has agreed to undertake. The council, however, has yet to begin its own probe.

But how can business groups conduct an authoritative probe when the investigation partakes of an engineering, technical nature? In this case, “independent” is not the only adjective needed to render any finding credible. The businessmen would have had to rely on their appointed experts as well.

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Police and the media have also been harping about a supposedly independent probe conducted by disinterested parties— from the Australian Federal Police, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations, as well as a team of experts from Israel.

The yarn is that these groups’ findings all supported the police theory that effectively ruled out a terrorist attack as the cause of the Glorietta explosion.

But the spokesman of Ayala Land Inc., Alfonso Javier Reyes, feels something is amiss. For one, they have not actually seen a copy of any of those reports, much less read them and compare the supposed findings with their own results.

Reyes says they have only heard, through media leaks of the Australian report, that this group found no indications of an improvised explosive device. Hence, the cause of the blast may have been a gas explosion. But it was also mentioned in the report that the source of gas was unknown, and so the Australians went on to suggest four kinds of gases—one of which is methane—which could have been the culprit.

Then again, Ayala Land wishes it can actually get its hands on the reports. It wonders, thus, whether these conclusions (not only from the Australians but the American and Israeli groups as well) were communicated to the police only verbally, whether the printed and bound reports were deemed top secret, used only by the police who then had total discretion on which portions to leak to the media. The company wonders why so many people can talk when the documents, supposedly the basis of all these statements, are not even available.

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The next few days will determine whether the police will stand their ground and pin Ayala Land down for negligence in this industrial failure. If this happens, Reyes says, Ayala will defend itself to the end, “fighting on the basis of what’s factual and what can be proven.”

He is confident that in the long run, the credibility earned by Ayala through the years will tide it through.

But in the meantime, has business gone on?

Not as usual, of course. More than a hundred mall tenants were affected by the explosion The entire Glorietta 2 wing remains closed. There are, quite expectedly, less people roaming the mall. And if they’re not avoiding Glorietta out of fear of whatever chemicals there maybe in the basements, they are staying away because the sadness in the place, as a result of the tragedy, is much too palpable.

Ayala Land’s share price has definitely reflected some investor concerns. To date, it has not yet gone past P17, the stock’s closing price on Oct. 19, a little more than an hour before the actual explosion. There was even a week when the price hovered around the vicinity of P15 when the rest of the market was on a rally. But in recent days, prices have rebounded and reflected some gains.

In truth, though, Reyes is hesitant to talk about the repercussions of the incident on Ayala’s business operations. The company realizes that the death of 11 people and the disruption in the lives of the injured, as well as the tragedy’s effects on their families, are more profound and far-reaching than any corporate consequences. Hence it is doing its best to provide assistance to the victims’ families and help them restore their existence to normalcy.

It is a month before Christmas. The holidays have always been festive in Ayala malls. Now the challenge is much too different from the usual determination of themes or the scheduling of mall events. This year, the company has to keep sober even in the face of wild speculation even by those who themselves say they need time to gather evidence and that they couldn’t come up with any conclusive findings just yet.

Ayala says it has no preferred outcome on the matter. Actually, no outcome is good when eleven people already lost their lives. People should stop floating theories prematurely. The order of the day is to keep on searching for the truth to get to the real outcome—what actually happened on that fateful day. It is the only way to do justice to the victims and to their families who mourn their loss.