Philippine President Benigno
Aquino hands rice to a hungry
mother and daughter. Typhoon Haiyan, known to Filipinos as
Yolanda, is proving almost as damaging to
Aquino politically
as it has been to the life and limb of his
people.
An 'Irrelevant President', Not Anderson Cooper, is Our Problem
(Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines)
"The sobering reality never seemed to sink into the heads
of administration officials, their seeming ignorance of the breadth and length
of the destruction hard to fathom. ... The impression President Aquino tried to
project in his CNN interview with ChristianeAmanpour was of a government in control, but this was
belied by the situation on the ground. ... The humanity of the entire world,
now converging on the Philippines, honors the victims. Never mind if the most
powerful man in the Philippines has not. He no longer matters. He is no longer
our leader."
Philippines President Benigno Aquino: Is the world judging he and his government too harshly, given the scale of the disaster wrought by Typhoon Haiyan?
This
is not just a case of shoulda, woulda and coulda - and Anderson Cooper has nothing to do with it.
Note that even Philippine media reported in a similar fashion. Even without CNN
(and add to that the BBC and Al-Jazeera) and other commentaries, the cries of
the hungry and homeless survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” in Tacloban sound like more than simple pleas, to say the
least.
With
each passing day, as the entire world heard the same cries we did, Malacañang’s response (or lack thereof) to the full-blown and worsening
crisis became all the more baffling. The sobering reality never seemed to sink
into the heads of administration officials, their seeming ignorance of the
breadth and length of the destruction hard to fathom. For example, it was media
that told us of the small islands off northern Cebu that had gone for days without
food and shelter - and that no government aid had reached them.
The
impression President Aquino tried to project in his CNNinterview with ChristianeAmanpour [watch below] was of a government in
control, but this was belied by the situation on the ground. That disconnect
now appears to have sent the once much-vaunted popularity of the president into
a nosedive.
Six
days later - remember, six days without food and water is an eternity and the entire
world was watching, Mr. Aquino asserted that he was in overall charge of the
relief effort. That being understood as a tacit admission of the Malacañang Palace's shortcomings, frustration burrowed deep
into the public consciousness and sentiment. The Aquino “charm” had imploded.
To
be fair, no one is expected him to emerge a [weather] expert after the
strongest typhoon to hit land in recorded history. If Mr. Aquino fumbled,
that’s understandable. We can forgive him for that.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
But
after his interview with Amanpour, it became clear
that he was jumbled. He said the estimate of 10,000 deaths was likely too high,
and apparently, the figure so irked him that he sacked the police director who
reportedly gave that figure. President Aquino seemed so fixated on his pre-Yolanda
framework of “zero deaths,” that he told Amanpour that
the approximately 1,000 deaths that had at that point been reported would most
likely not rise substantially. At that time, news reports were coming in mostly
from Tacloban or were focused on that city. Casualties
in Capiz, Iloilo, Cebu, Coron,
and even nearby Eastern Samar and Ormoc, were as yet
unknown. Now that as I write, the death toll has reached 3,600, proving the
President wrong, we wonder: Were his lieutenants feeding him incorrect or
guarded information? Was there a cordon sanitaire
in the days following the tragedy?
On
that same sixth day after the Typhoon, Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas
reappeared in Tacloban. We know that Roxas was in Tacloban since the
day before Yolanda made landfall. When hotel guests were crying for help, they
claimed Roxas just walked by them, surrounded by his
bodyguards, unperturbed by the chaos that was beginning to emerge. Then he was
lost from the TV cameras - for days.
A boy amongst the ruins of his home destroyed
by Typhoon Haiyan in
Leyte Province makes the best possible use of
a news photographer,
Nov. 14. The long wait for aid is costing
lives, and wounding President
Benigno Aquino politically.
In
the meantime, [broadcaster] Korina
Sanchez threw a tantrum on air over Anderson Cooper’s reporting on the “disorganized”
government response and relief efforts in the aftermath of Yolanda. That
effectively cost the president more points with a public that had by then grown
depressed over the heart-wrenching images of death and devastation Yolanda left
behind.
Notice
as well that in his interviews, Mr. Aquino would continually refer to “local
government.” Tacloban’s Alfred Romualdez
is not only an opposition mayor, he is the scion of a family that many see as
the nemesis of the Aquinos. To be sure, the
recounting by Romualdez and his wife of the mayor’s
“inspecting the ballroom of a family resort” to see how much damage Yolanda
inflicted on it registered badly with the public, which will have to hold him
to account for that as well. But notice, too, that the same references to
“local government” and “shoulda, woulda,
coulda reacted to the crisis” were echoed by Roxas in subsequent interviews six and seven days after the
fact. Where was the Aquino Administration in the meantime, when concrete,
effective response and relief efforts were lacking from the Palace,as it punished Mayor Romualdez
for not coming to the aid of his suffering constituents?
Overnight,
the public’s pet name for the president “P-Noy”
metamorphosed on social media into "BS Aquino." No need to ask me
what that means.
We
honor all those who have died in this heart-rending calamity. We honor the
woman who slept night after night with the corpses of her three young children
because government was nowhere, so that they could have even the "decency"
of a mass burial. We honor the old woman whose only daughter had to leave her in
her sickened state in order to search for food. We honor everyone who now wakes
up to another day of sorrow they will have to live with for the rest of their
lives.
We
honor them not because the most powerful man in this country has not, but
because it is the right and humane thing to do. The humanity of the entire
world, now converging on the Philippines, honors them. Never mind if the most
powerful man in the Philippines has not. He no longer matters. His irrelevance
has begun to be exposed. He is no longer our leader.
