CNN Rightly Shames Aquino Government Over Typhoon Response (The
Daily Tribune, The Philippines)
"CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper, who is in Tacloban City, pointedly criticized the Aquino government for its slow response to the desperate survivors of typhoon Yolanda, who after five days have yet to receive any aid whatsoever. ... They are starving, have no potable water, and no food or shelter. In the midst of the incredible disaster being experienced by almost 700,000 people in the Visayas, where an estimated 10,000 have died while others are convulsing in hunger, President Aquino was in his usual blame others mode, this time on local officials for not heeding the 'distress call.'"
Soldiers rush a typhoon survivor after she collapsed in a line waiting to board a military transport plane at the badly damaged Tacloban airport, Nov. 13.
President
Aquino and his administration can no longer claim that it is local critics alone
giving he and the Philippines a bad name, after the foreign journalists who have
came to the country to cover the aftermath of supertyphoon Haiyan
(local name “Yolanda”) called the way the Aquino government has handled the
delivery of basic services to typhoon victims chaotic, disorganized, and
ineffectual. Visiting reporters repeatedly stress the Philippine government’s
slow response.
Cable
News Network (CNN) senior correspondent Anderson Cooper, who is in Tacloban City, pointedly
criticized the Aquino government for its slow response to the desperate
survivors of typhoon Yolanda, who after five days have yet to receive any aid
whatsoever. They are starving, have no potable water, and no food or shelter.
In
his live coverage at the Tacloban Airport at about 9am Tuesday, Cooper said:
“Simply there isn’t enough aid, and what aid there is isn’t getting out to
those who need it the most.”
Another
well known CNN reporter, Christine Amanpour, told
Aquino: “The way you respond will define your presidency.”
Aquino
quickly laid the blame on local executives.
Cooper
was shocked to learn that five days (today is the ninth day, he made the
comment Tuesday), very little relief efforts have been made by Philippine
rescue units.
“There
is very little organization in terms of the Philippine side. That’s the
frustrating thing for the people here,” he added.
Cooper
was only able to broadcast from Tacloban City by flying in on a cargo plane with
250 U.S. Marines from Okinawa, Japan. And it wasn’t only Cooper who made such
criticisms of the Aquino government. Other CNN reporters covering the story had
similar observations.
Cooper’s
plane was only able to land after U.S. Marines cleared the airport of debris.
Another CNN correspondent, Andrew Stevens said: “I’m increasingly frustrated. You
walk around downtown Tacloban, there’s pile of rotting garbage; there are
corpses and animals; there’s no real evidence of organized recovery, organized
relief going on.”
The
correspondent said he saw a van distributing relief goods but guessed it was
good for only 50 people. “There are tens of thousands of people who need food,
water, clothes and medicines. The frustration down there is extraordinary
high,” the correspondent added.
In
the midst of incredible disaster being experience by almost 700,000 people in
the Visayas, where an estimated 10,000 have died
while others are convulsing in hunger, President Aquino was still in his usual
blame the others mode, this time again on local officials for not heeding the
“distress call'”
In
his interview on CNN international with Amanpour,
Aquino asked about his responsibility as president. He was also asked whether he
would agree that “the way you and your government respond to this terrible
devastation will probably define your presidency.”
“I
think you’re gonna ask all of the governors, for
instance, in the areas that have been saying that … are making them aware of
the dangers that were forthcoming from this typhoon that enabled them to move
their population from danger areas and to safer areas and thereby minimize
casualties.
“A
lot of them, with the exception of Leyte Province, Eastern and Western Samar,
have reported that practically, well, one or two casualties or even zero
casualties, when normally when we have a typhoon you will also have ships that
were travelling that would have sunk, casualties in the hundreds probably
didn’t merit too much attention,” was Aquino’s excuse.
On
a personal note, Aquino was asked: "How has it affected you, what you’ve
seen, and how do you manage to reassure your people who have gone through this
supertyphoon, after the earthquake, after the typhoon last year?
Aquino
said typhoons in the country are not unusual occurrences, but that this year
has been exceptionally bad, with more than twenty.
A ferry boat washed
inland by a storm surge caused by Typhoon Haiyan, in
the city of Tacloban,
central Philippines. The destruction caused by what is
being called the most
powerful storm ever to make landfall is unimaginable.
He
then claimed that he has been able to “demonstrate as a government and as a
people, collectively, that we take care of each other and the government’s
immediate response, I think, has been reassuring to the vast majority of our
people,” claiming that he has that capacity to take care of problems rather
quickly.
He
put the blame on the local executives, saying it is they who are responsible
for the relief and rescue operations.
“Our
system says that the local government units have to take care of the initial
response,” Aquino said.
Rosemarie
Church, a CNN anchor in Atlanta Georgia, commented that Aquino was trying to
evade responsibility. Her co-anchor agreed.
In
the worst hit areas, where some of the local officials could not be seen or are
presumed dead, survivors are looking up into the heavens, and the dead people,
old and young, are piling up.
Aquino
simply denied the slow response, as well as the bottleneck of trying to give
vital aid to the people, laying all blame on local executives.
With
policemen also victims, he said that “the national government had to not just
augment what the local government could do, but actually replace a lot of the
personnel with personnel from other regions to take care of government’s vital
functions,” Aquino said.
Aquino
emphasized that “what hampers the effort is that the typhoon brought havoc on
the power lines and also the communications facilities giving us immense
difficulty in identifying needs and dispatching the necessary relief supplies
and various equipment.
“So
today (Tuesday), all of the national roads, I understand, have already been
reopened. We’re already working on the secondary roads and most of the airports
are almost back to normal operating levels. But still, the sheer number of
people that were affected in these three provinces is quite daunting,” Aquino
said, conveniently omitting the fact that things moved only when foreign troops
took charge of clearing the roads and providing water and food, among other
things.
Aquino
said the Social Work Department workers “are tasked to provide something like
50,000 family food packs every two days; and this is a number that is still not
hard and fast, it might still grow. Family food pack is defined as enough
sustenance for a family of five for two days.”
Aquino
denied having catastrophic death toll estimates of 10,000 in the worst-hit
areas in Tacloban City alone.
He
said initial government estimates are about a couple of thousand dead.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
“Ten
thousand, I think, is too much. And perhaps, that was also brought by ... being in the center of the destruction,
being actual ... there was emotional trauma involved with that particular
estimate quoting both a police official and a local government officials. They
were too close to the incident. They didn’t have basis for it,” Aquino said.
Aquino
said that, “the figure right now I have is about 2,000 but this might still get
higher. We are hoping to be able to contact something like 29 municipalities
left wherein we still have to establish the numbers, especially of the missing.
...But so far, 2,000 to about 2,500 is
the figure we are working on as far as deaths are concerned,” Aquino said.
BayanMuna
Representative NeriColmenares
yesterday accused the Aquino Administration of being too slow in its relief and
rescue efforts in typhoon-stricken areas like Visayas,
as said it spends too much of its time blaming local government officials for the
loss of life and property they have suffered.
“All
of us have to unite to deliver relief to the victims of Yolanda. It is not the
time to pinpoint whether the fault lies with Malacañang
or local officials,” said Colmenares.
“However,
media reports show that national government efforts are really quite slow and ineffective
considering that six days have already passed since Yolanda struck. Relief
goods have been pouring in since day one but the victims have yet to obtain
them. Billions have already been donated but funds given to the storm struck
areas are coming in a trickle. In fact, private companies and individuals as
well as NGOs are more effective delivering help,” said Colmenares.
Meanwhile,
teachers’ group Alliance of Concerned Teachers lashed out at Aquino for being impotent
in the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters to hit the country.
“Five
days after Supertyphoon Yolanda devastated the Central Philippines, aid and
assistance from national government has yet to be received by survivors,” said
ACT Secretary-General France Castro.
“It
is appalling to know that the national government under Aquino seems inutile in
responding to the disaster faced by our people.
![[Click Here for Jumbo Version]](http://blog.care.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/reuters-damage.jpg){kind=link}