Loss of trust and confidence

Written by  Ninez Cacho-Olivares

Noynoy and his Liberal Party, especially its president, Mar Roxas, the presidential anointee, by now realize that they can no longer escape blame and responsibility for whatever damaging issue comes their way, as like it or not, Noynoy’s presidency and his administration have already been defined negatively on the basis of their mishandling of the “Yolanda” crisis.

As they would be defined by their inaction and uncaring nature, this would have a negative impact on the LP bid to stay in power after 2016.

It will be difficult for Noynoy and the LP to get the electorate to trust them again to do a good job, even after the Yolanda crisis settles down, because there will be more crises coming their way — and not just on issues such as typhoons and earthquakes.

Before Yolanda, Noynoy and his aides somehow always got away with evading responsibility and accountability, even as they continued playing the blame game. It was always somebody else’s fault, never theirs. And whatever promises they made but were never fulfilled, people somehow glossed over, mainly due to Noynoy’s yellow media and his yellow manipulated surveys that constantly gave him high popularity ratings even when other items in the same surveys were already clearly contradictory, such as high concerns of the respondents over government poor performance.

But with the blame game played by Noynoy in Tacloban, three days after the monster typhoon hit the Visayas, with Leyte and Samar being brought to their knees, it was much too clear to Filipinos that Noynoy and his LPs have gone too far in evading responsibility for their unpreparedness, unfeeling and uncaring national government’s response to the crisis in these two provinces.

Filipinos saw for themselves how Noynoy and his aides continued to play the blame game and vindictive politics in Tacloban, three days into the typhoon crisis and their failed bid to evade responsibility, which brought back all those other times that Noynoy evaded responsibility over the many other crises, not to mention his and his government’s unpreparedness for any sort of crisis, sometimes of their own making.

They remembered the way Noynoy and his LP allies mishandling of the August 2010 Manila hostage crisis, and his refusal to accept responsibility for the botched hostage rescue which left at least eight Hong Kong tourists dead, with one more still in the ICU to this day.

Worse, Noynoy refused to charge his allies who were responsible for their botched rescue operations and to this day, no sanctions have been meted for their criminal negligence.

Talk has been making the rounds that the Tacloban mayor, Alfred Romualdez, who is a Noynoy foe, for being related to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, a day after Yolanda hit the city and the province, had already asked the national disaster council to come to their aid, as devastation of his city was massive. His call went unheeded. The second day, a Sunday, Romualdez was said to have pleaded for the national government to send the military and the police forces to take over the peace and order situation.

Even on the third day, when Noynoy flew to Tacloban, and there were already reports of looting, starvation and people exposed to the elements, as they have lost their homes, Noynoy was still on his blame game mode, compounded by his political vindictiveness, as he even walked out of the disaster council meeting, refusing to heed the pleas of businessmen who had complained of looting and of being shot for trying to stop the looting of their stores. This was met by a stony “well, you’re not dead, are you?” 

And even on the fifth day, there was hardly any strong government presence or even the military presence. It had to take international media to bring this issue out.

All these will be remembered, now and in 2016, as the people now know that they have been served so poorly by a president whose propaganda of thei being his boss was believed, but whose belief today has been shattered by Noynoy and his LPs through their uncaring ways.

http://www.tribune.net.ph/commentary/loss-of-trust-and-confidence