Milenko Kindl

MANILA, Philippines - A day-care center owner armed with grenades and
guns held more than 30 youngsters and teachers hostage on a bus
Wednesday, then freed them after a 10-hour standoff that he used to
denounce corruption and demand better lives for impoverished children.
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Clutching dolls, toys and backpacks, the children began filing off the
bus shortly after 7 p.m., as Jun Ducat had promised in a rambling
message delivered via a loudspeaker hours earlier.

Ducat, a 56-year-old civil engineer who has staged other attention-
grabbing stunts in the past, then put the pin back in a grenade,
handed it to a provincial governor, Luis "Chavit" Singson, and
surrendered as Singson held his arm.

"I accept that I should be jailed because what I did was against the
law," Ducat said in an interview with The Associated Press shortly
before the standoff ended.

Jubilant parents were quickly reunited with their children while Ducat
was led to a waiting police car and driven away.

Dr. Leopoldo Orantia, spokesman for a government hospital, said the
children would undergo checkups and psychological debriefings.

White candles had been lit, in accordance with Ducat's request, and
placed in yellow cups lined up under the yellow police tape used to
cordon off the area. Police and other officials also held candles
outside the bus, as did people in the crowd that went to watch the
situation unfold.

"Let the candles be a warning," Ducat said. "If the promises remain
unfulfilled, you will see those candles again."

Ducat reportedly had chartered the tourist bus for a field trip
marking the end of the school year.

Instead, he had the driver take them to City Hall, where a handwritten
sheet of paper was taped to the windshield that said he was holding 32
children and two teachers and was armed with two grenades, an assault
rifle and a .45-caliber pistol.

Earlier Ducat had made a long statement through a wireless microphone
while the children chanted his name. He railed against the failure of
politicians in the Philippines to make good on promises to provide
free education and housing for the poor, and called corruption in the
country the worst in Asia.

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