Craziness

One day, perhaps when all the anger, the blame-tossing and the Monday morning quarterbacking have ceased, all the things that went wrong in the official and unofficial response to Typhoon Yolanda will be documented and analyzed, with a view to avoiding them when future calamities strike our calamity-prone land. After all, while we can always improve our capability to lessen the death toll and the damage to property in future disasters, we simply cannot prevent disasters from happening.

And I hope one of the unforgivable errors made in the past few days that should never again be repeated is putting a cap on the number of casualties, especially in order to please government leaders who want to make it appear that they didn’t lack for preparation before the calamity hit. There is simply no way that our leaders should be allowed to get away with this ghoulish practice in aid of shoring up their battered public image.

By now, most Filipinos – and a lot of people in other countries, thanks to the foreign press that descended on Tacloban and other stricken areas – already know that the regional police director of Eastern Visayas, Chief Superintendent Elmer Soria, was relieved after he publicly estimated the number of people killed by Yolanda at 10,000. Soria’s only offense was to go against President Noynoy Aquino’s fearless forecast of a “zero casualty” count right before the typhoon hit and the President’s later estimate of 2,000 to 2,500 deaths, after disaster struck.

So the general displeased his bosses and was fired; happens all the time. But Soria’s relief was nothing compared to what was about to come.

I realized just how serious government is in implementing Aquino’s virtual – and totally irrational – order to put a limit on the body count, after the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, the inter-agency body that is coordinating the response to the typhoon, announced that it will no longer update the official number of 4,011 people who died in the aftermath of Yolanda. The decision was announced, according to one newspaper report, even if the official tally did not yet include the 1,172 persons who died in Tacloban City alone (based on the reports of a local task force) and despite the fact that 1,602 other persons remained officially missing.

The head of NDRRMC – who said, in Nazi-like fashion, that he was “only following orders” – explained that the official body count was not completely stopped. But henceforth, “[t]he count that should be submitted should be duly signed by the local chief executive and the city health officer,” as if his own agency, which used to be the sole source of official casualty and property damage figures in the past, is no longer doing the counting anymore.

Of course, what NDRRMC (that acronym probably also needs changing in the future, as well) announced was really putting another bureaucratic layer on top of the casualty-counting process, not an end to the count. But counting only casualties that have been signed off on by the local mayor and his health officer will ensure that the system is delayed some more – or a lot more, really, because one of the last things these harried local executives have time for after a calamity is to sign papers concerning final casualty, tallies which will take a very long time to compile in areas where water, food and shelter are the highest priorities.

Because of this country’s long and unhappy experience with the undue delaying and the abrupt ending of election tallies, official and unofficial, I see no good that will come out this newfangled (and possibly illegal) devolution. The only thing lacking is a takeover of the Yolanda casualty count by Comelec and Namfrel, which could probably lead to an official death toll that is actually less than the current 4,011 – and closer to the President’s desired target of 2,000-2500.

But why does Aquino have to have his lower count anyway? Is he, as the pundit Teddy Boy Locsin has suggested, so lacking in humility that he will not accept that his government’s preparations and his “zero casualty” predictions have been proved so disastrously off the mark?

And what do we do to the people around Aquino who act as enablers of this sort of craziness by sacking officials who don’t think as he does and who will even suppress the truth about the number of deaths, just to make him happy? Do they not know how badly they are serving the country and, ultimately, Aquino himself by indulging his zero-casualty fantasies?

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While we’re at it, another error we shouldn’t repeat in future calamities is having a secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development who cries when she is caught doing something illegal, like repacking relief goods, among other things. Yes, that’s exactly what the waterworks-prone Corazon “Dinky” Soliman did, in response to criticism about her department’s improper handling of the donated relief goods, including repackaging them and removing any trace of their having been donated by other people outside of government.

I was just waiting for Soliman to hold hands with her people and start signing “If We Hold on Together.” Then I’ll know that Aquino is well and truly in trouble.

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/11/22/craziness/