Thousands of Filipinos perished in super typhoon “Yolanda,” internationally known as “Haiyan,” according to the latest media reports. Worth of damage was estimated to be in the tens of billions, as the wreckage of houses, buildings spread across towns and cities in the Visayas. In fact, we're being conservative here: Yolanda wiped out whole towns and cities.
But what was even more disastrous was the disaster response of the Aquino government. Bodies were left to rot in the streets as the operation to retrieve them was too slow. The injured and the sick were left unattended for days, some of them dying eventually from the neglect. And the survivors were left to starve and thirst for days without any trace of hope that they would be relieved by government aid.
Even if he were a parachute journalist and guilty of weeping-heart, actorish editorializing, CNN's Anderson Cooper should not be faulted for the accuracy of his statement: “There is no real evidence of organized recovery or relief.”
Hours before the landfall of Yolanda, President Aquino had announced that the government was ready for the strong winds and rains of the super typhoon.
Days after, sought by the media to comment on the large devastation left by the typhoon, Aquino took out his frustration on the local government, with Interior Secretary and the President's running-mate in the 2010 elections, Manuel Roxas II, echoing the President’s statements.
Aquino blamed the local officials for not being prepared, which turned out to be confusing since he previously assured the people through television that they had already made preparations for the affected areas.
So what was Aquino harping about?
A true leader would not have initiated the finger-pointing and the blame-pinning himself. Aquino’s incapacity to accept criticisms was shown in how he handled the local and international media reports. He hit the media statistics on the death toll (the media were quoting merely figures provided by the local police), saying that it was only 2,000 to 2,500, not the 10,000 that was initially given as ballpark figure.
But as it's turning out, the figure was not exaggerated. The body count as of press time is nearing 6,000. Aquino's math is grossly poor, it appears. Should he go back to Ateneo for a refresher in arithmetic?
But still, obviously irritated with comments on how disorganized the government was, Aquino asked the media to give accurate reports. But the reporters were there to help disseminate information, to let government officials know the situation in other areas and the victims’ needs, and to tell the world of their stories.
Accurate or not, all reports indicated one thing—help was too slow to come, if they came at all. Response was, well, not responsive. And hardly responsible.
Yes, it is difficult even for the government to make it all okay in a day or two. But that kind of insensitive, weak display of leadership from the administration should not be condoned. For five days after the typhoon, assistance was still nowhere to be found in most places.
The President himself warned the people of a calamity, so it is clear that while the local officials may be the first responders, the national government must eventually take charge. Mr. President, your "boss" — the poeople — just got hit by one of the deadliest typhoons in recorded history. It is bad taste to blame them for Yolanda. And stop politicking. Relief and rescue should not be determined by self-serving agendas.
Yolanda and its aftermath exposed the Aquino administration for what it is–a disaster government with no sense of strategic planning or the sense of urgency to come to the people's rescue.
Since it started in 2010, the Aquino administration has been on a campaign of vindictiveness against its perceived enemies. This has been all along its overrding strategic goal. That is why even the chief of the weather bureau appointed by the former administation was fired at the start of Aquino's administration. This was the reason too that compelled the impeachment of Chief Justice Corona and the smear campaign against the Catholic Church especially by the Margie Juico-led Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office which hired a high-powered spin clown to wine and dine the commercial, sensationalist secular media and leak the erroneous story about the so-called "Pajero bishops."
But as it is turning out, the campaign of vindictiveness has replaced any sense of good government and strategic planning. This administration, for instance, has seen three chief weathermen resign in just three years of its existence and seen the host of inundations of Manila and elsewhere by strong typhoons and heavy monsoon rains; but it has done nothing to check flooding and minimize the damage of the increasingly erratic weather pattern. It has done nothing to equip adequately the Pagasa weather bureau to better make track of meteorological and geological outbursts,
Worse, it has not done anything to improve civil defense, It may have renamed the civil defense agency as the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, but by its incompetence, insensitivity and corruption, it has not reduced the risks to the people of natural catastophes, it has abetted them.
One could easily see that the Aquino government has not done anything to enhance civil defense when one considers that last June, when monsoon rains flooded Metro Manila and Southern Tagalog.
Now with Yolanda, Filipinos have discovered that things have worsened. Not only does the country lack trucks for civil defense, it has only THREE C-130 cargo planes to airlift relief goods and military and civilian personnel during emergencies. Singapore, a tiny city-state smaller than Metro Manila, and Thailand, which is not visited by typhoons, has more C-130's, which they promptly and oh so generously deployed to help in aid relief in the Philippines.
Where have all the money gone for social services and civil defense and relief? Apparently, they have gone to partisan lobbying and horse trading to get Corona impeached and convicted and to have the represehensible, eugenics-based Reproductive Health bill passed. Just as worse as lawmakers siphoning their pork barrel to ghost NGO's and their own pockets is the Aquino government using people's money to curry favor with lawmakers and politicians as it wages its campaign of political vindictiveness and its "burgis" and jesuitic social-engineering advocacy against the Filipino poor.
As it is turning out, Yolanda was not the real disaster. The real disaster should also have a name. And its name is Pnoy.
