Written by
Paul Atienza
Blame game still on; Tacloban execs probed for ‘gross negligence’
In
his bid to take full control and take total credit for disaster relief
and rehabilitation, now that foreign aid has been pouring in, President
Aquino has fashioned himself as the country’s “Disaster Czar” after
criticism of his slow response to a devastating super typhoon, with the
calamity set to become the defining event of his presidency.
Aquino toured the worst-hit towns and cities on Sunday and announced that he would set up base in the region until he was “satisfied” that the relief operation was running as effectively as it should.
He also made some thinly veiled criticisms of local officials, suggesting they had been under-prepared and provided inaccurate data which had hampered the relief effort.
Aquino went back to his “blaming others” mode directed at the local government executives of Tacloban City and Leyte province, hinting broadly of their having been “grossly negligent” that caused thousands of deaths and vast damage to infrastructure and properties as compared to other provinces, such as Samar, where the local executives are his, and his Liberal Party allies.
Aquino yesterday, in the super typhoon devastated area of Tacloban, Leyte, bared that an Palace investigation on the way the local executives had unefficiently implemented the distress call before the typhoon surge struck in the areas, as he bragged that in Samar, the efficiency of the Samar local officials—all his allies—was seen through their preparedness in the super storm, lauding them for the very low casualty rate of merely three dead.
If the findings, which are expected to find Tacloban mayor Alfred Romualdez, guilty of “gross negligence” can cause Romualdez’ suspension as mayor for months, and a case in court.
“As president, I should not show my anger. No matter how irritated I am,” he said.
In recent months, his image has taken something of a hit as public anger has grown over a government corruption scandal.
At the end of October, he felt compelled to go on national television and publicly declare he was “not a thief” as he defended hundreds of millions of dollars in government spending that has come under scrutiny.
Typhoon Haiyan was always going to be a major test, but the unprecedented ferocity of the storm was overwhelming and exacerbated by a 16-foot storm surge that sent tsunami-like waves crashing into coastal cities, towns and villages.
As the scale of the destruction became apparent, Aquino was initially criticized for what was seen as some insensitive quibbling over the likely death toll.
His initial estimate of 2,500 now appears unduly optimistic with the number of confirmed dead standing at almost 5,,000, with another 1,600 missing and many remote areas still to be properly assessed.
At the same time, the long delay of several days in getting the official relief program up and running was taken as a lack of preparedness, and that played badly with the gruesome video footage coming out of the worst-hit zones.
Aquino’s decision to move down to the impacted region was clearly aimed at demonstrating a “hands-on” appreciation of the situation, and on Monday he toured other devastated towns where he was filmed helping out at distribution centers.
“We have to raise people’s morale, we have to encourage them to get back on their feet as soon as possible by giving them positive signals of assistance and encouragement,” Aquino’s spokesman Herminio Coloma said Monday.
“The President wants to ensure they have ample supplies and that they could be sustained so that we can move on to the next stage which is rehabilitation.”
Aquino’s criticism of local officials did not go down well in Tacloban City, which was badly hit by the storm surge.
“Will we insult the dead, and say they died because they were unprepared?” Tacloban Mayor Romualdez said Monday.
There was an element of political and personal bad blood to the spat, with Aquino and Romualdez belonging to two of the most powerful political clans in modern Philippine history.
Aquino’s mother, Corazon Aquino, led the “people power” revolt that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
Romualdez is related to Marcos’s widow, former first lady Imelda Marcos, who remains a powerful political figure as a congresswoman. Her son, Ferdinand Jr, is a senator eyeing a run at the next presidential elections in 2016.
“The whole relief effort has been politically polarized,” said Prospero de Vera, a political analyst at the University of the Philippines.
“This will be the defining moment of Aquino’s administration, and he needs to act very strongly and be very focused, and rise above any political bickering,” De Vera said.
But apparently, despite Aquino’s wresting control from Romualdez, Japan decided to give its donation directly to Tacloban, through its mayor.
Boxes of relief aid were handed over to the Tacloban mayor during a ceremony at the city hall.
“We have brought seven trucks full of tents, vinyl sheets, generators, water filters, sleeping mats and water,” said Takahiro Sasaki, chief representative for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), representing the government.
“The keyword during the tsunami was that it was ‘unexpected.’ I felt the same when I came here, that all this was beyond what you could assume. We came by vehicles from Ormoc to Tacloban, which was over 100 kilometers and everything was totally destroyed,” Sasaki said.
Romualdez said he was grateful that international aid has finally come in and relief effort has spread to remote villages.
“Thank you very much to the JICA and for Japan to always be partners with us, in all our crises. This will definitely help the people, the Taclobanos,” he said.
In the areas hit by typoon, Aquino said that because he is president, he cannot get angry, but that he has been blamed for all the disaster in Tacloban City and Leyte. He said the sudden happenstance in Tacloban should be compared to other areas where the same notice was televised.
“Well, I’m the Chief Executive. Therefore, everything that happens ultimately resides with me. But if you look at the casualty figures, the bulk of them happened in this region (Leyte). And one has to ask why this particular region.
“Why are some provinces, for instance, reporting zero, zero casualties in terms of deaths. Some of them are very, very minimal but here you are talking thousands already. And everybody was basically given the same bits of knowledge and information,” Aquino said.
Aquino said he would rather not to say anything negative about foreign countries that are giving donations and support for the country to recover fast.
“I’d rather not criticize the country that is helping us, among others. We have lessons learned from that experience and I think we implemented it within our capacities,” Aquino said.
“One is tempted to despair. But the minute I despair, then everybody gets hampered with efforts to get up,” Aquino said.
In Homonhon, the message spelled out in giant letters on the ground outside the remote, typhoon-shattered Philippine village was clear enough: “Help Us. We Need Food”.
Easily visible as the US helicopter carrying emergency food supplies made its approach Monday, it reflected the desperation of the villagers 10 days after Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the central Philippines.
As soon as the chopper touched down and the doors opened, around 100 villagers rushed to the aircraft and began pulling at the bags of rice inside before they could be properly unloaded.
“It’s the first food we’ve had,” a woman shouted as the crew tried to persuade the residents of the tiny inland village in eastern Leyte island to move back.
The rice was finally offloaded and, as the helicopter took off again, one of the villagers gestured wildly with his hands to his mouth, pleading for the crew to return with more supplies.
“Those in the remote areas are the most desperate,” said Chief Petty Officer Matthew Gensler. “The further out you go, the harder it is.”
The helicopter was one of many that have been flying continual sorties off the USS George Washington aircraft carrier since it arrived to spearhead a growing international relief operation.
On the tiny island of Homonhon, which suffered a direct hit from the super typhoon, the mood was calmer, with villagers waiting patiently as the helicopter crew unloaded water supplies.
Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, commander of USS George Washington strike group, said that as well as bringing supplies in, its helicopter crews had “airlifted around 5,000 displaced people to safety”.
Although the relief operation took time to get up and running, aid agencies and humanitarian groups have firmly established operational posts in the flattened region’s largest city Tacloban.
Victims who survived the Philippines’ super typhoon by huddling in a cave as a tsunami-like wave obliterated their community have now made it their home — reduced to Stone Age conditions with nowhere else to go.
Manuel Isquierdo and his wife sought refuge in the limestone den as Haiyan — one of the strongest storms ever recorded — flattened the town of Mercedes on Samar island, washing away residents’ livelihoods in the devastating early hours of Nov. 8.
“It was past midnight when my wife and I decided to run up to the cave behind our house,” the fisherman told AFP.
“We were just in time. Our house crumpled to the ground soon after,” the 38-year-old added.
The couple were joined by two other families and spent more than six hours in the dark, damp cavern as rising storm surge waters edged dangerously closer and closer to its entrance, frightened that they would drown or be swept out to sea. AFP
http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/noy-now-the-disaster-czar-of-visayas
Blame game still on; Tacloban execs probed for ‘gross negligence’
In
his bid to take full control and take total credit for disaster relief
and rehabilitation, now that foreign aid has been pouring in, President
Aquino has fashioned himself as the country’s “Disaster Czar” after
criticism of his slow response to a devastating super typhoon, with the
calamity set to become the defining event of his presidency.Aquino toured the worst-hit towns and cities on Sunday and announced that he would set up base in the region until he was “satisfied” that the relief operation was running as effectively as it should.
He also made some thinly veiled criticisms of local officials, suggesting they had been under-prepared and provided inaccurate data which had hampered the relief effort.
Aquino went back to his “blaming others” mode directed at the local government executives of Tacloban City and Leyte province, hinting broadly of their having been “grossly negligent” that caused thousands of deaths and vast damage to infrastructure and properties as compared to other provinces, such as Samar, where the local executives are his, and his Liberal Party allies.
Aquino yesterday, in the super typhoon devastated area of Tacloban, Leyte, bared that an Palace investigation on the way the local executives had unefficiently implemented the distress call before the typhoon surge struck in the areas, as he bragged that in Samar, the efficiency of the Samar local officials—all his allies—was seen through their preparedness in the super storm, lauding them for the very low casualty rate of merely three dead.
If the findings, which are expected to find Tacloban mayor Alfred Romualdez, guilty of “gross negligence” can cause Romualdez’ suspension as mayor for months, and a case in court.
“As president, I should not show my anger. No matter how irritated I am,” he said.
In recent months, his image has taken something of a hit as public anger has grown over a government corruption scandal.
At the end of October, he felt compelled to go on national television and publicly declare he was “not a thief” as he defended hundreds of millions of dollars in government spending that has come under scrutiny.
Typhoon Haiyan was always going to be a major test, but the unprecedented ferocity of the storm was overwhelming and exacerbated by a 16-foot storm surge that sent tsunami-like waves crashing into coastal cities, towns and villages.
As the scale of the destruction became apparent, Aquino was initially criticized for what was seen as some insensitive quibbling over the likely death toll.
His initial estimate of 2,500 now appears unduly optimistic with the number of confirmed dead standing at almost 5,,000, with another 1,600 missing and many remote areas still to be properly assessed.
At the same time, the long delay of several days in getting the official relief program up and running was taken as a lack of preparedness, and that played badly with the gruesome video footage coming out of the worst-hit zones.
Aquino’s decision to move down to the impacted region was clearly aimed at demonstrating a “hands-on” appreciation of the situation, and on Monday he toured other devastated towns where he was filmed helping out at distribution centers.
“We have to raise people’s morale, we have to encourage them to get back on their feet as soon as possible by giving them positive signals of assistance and encouragement,” Aquino’s spokesman Herminio Coloma said Monday.
“The President wants to ensure they have ample supplies and that they could be sustained so that we can move on to the next stage which is rehabilitation.”
Aquino’s criticism of local officials did not go down well in Tacloban City, which was badly hit by the storm surge.
“Will we insult the dead, and say they died because they were unprepared?” Tacloban Mayor Romualdez said Monday.
There was an element of political and personal bad blood to the spat, with Aquino and Romualdez belonging to two of the most powerful political clans in modern Philippine history.
Aquino’s mother, Corazon Aquino, led the “people power” revolt that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
Romualdez is related to Marcos’s widow, former first lady Imelda Marcos, who remains a powerful political figure as a congresswoman. Her son, Ferdinand Jr, is a senator eyeing a run at the next presidential elections in 2016.
“The whole relief effort has been politically polarized,” said Prospero de Vera, a political analyst at the University of the Philippines.
“This will be the defining moment of Aquino’s administration, and he needs to act very strongly and be very focused, and rise above any political bickering,” De Vera said.
But apparently, despite Aquino’s wresting control from Romualdez, Japan decided to give its donation directly to Tacloban, through its mayor.
Boxes of relief aid were handed over to the Tacloban mayor during a ceremony at the city hall.
“We have brought seven trucks full of tents, vinyl sheets, generators, water filters, sleeping mats and water,” said Takahiro Sasaki, chief representative for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), representing the government.
“The keyword during the tsunami was that it was ‘unexpected.’ I felt the same when I came here, that all this was beyond what you could assume. We came by vehicles from Ormoc to Tacloban, which was over 100 kilometers and everything was totally destroyed,” Sasaki said.
Romualdez said he was grateful that international aid has finally come in and relief effort has spread to remote villages.
“Thank you very much to the JICA and for Japan to always be partners with us, in all our crises. This will definitely help the people, the Taclobanos,” he said.
In the areas hit by typoon, Aquino said that because he is president, he cannot get angry, but that he has been blamed for all the disaster in Tacloban City and Leyte. He said the sudden happenstance in Tacloban should be compared to other areas where the same notice was televised.
“Well, I’m the Chief Executive. Therefore, everything that happens ultimately resides with me. But if you look at the casualty figures, the bulk of them happened in this region (Leyte). And one has to ask why this particular region.
“Why are some provinces, for instance, reporting zero, zero casualties in terms of deaths. Some of them are very, very minimal but here you are talking thousands already. And everybody was basically given the same bits of knowledge and information,” Aquino said.
Aquino said he would rather not to say anything negative about foreign countries that are giving donations and support for the country to recover fast.
“I’d rather not criticize the country that is helping us, among others. We have lessons learned from that experience and I think we implemented it within our capacities,” Aquino said.
“One is tempted to despair. But the minute I despair, then everybody gets hampered with efforts to get up,” Aquino said.
In Homonhon, the message spelled out in giant letters on the ground outside the remote, typhoon-shattered Philippine village was clear enough: “Help Us. We Need Food”.
Easily visible as the US helicopter carrying emergency food supplies made its approach Monday, it reflected the desperation of the villagers 10 days after Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the central Philippines.
As soon as the chopper touched down and the doors opened, around 100 villagers rushed to the aircraft and began pulling at the bags of rice inside before they could be properly unloaded.
“It’s the first food we’ve had,” a woman shouted as the crew tried to persuade the residents of the tiny inland village in eastern Leyte island to move back.
The rice was finally offloaded and, as the helicopter took off again, one of the villagers gestured wildly with his hands to his mouth, pleading for the crew to return with more supplies.
“Those in the remote areas are the most desperate,” said Chief Petty Officer Matthew Gensler. “The further out you go, the harder it is.”
The helicopter was one of many that have been flying continual sorties off the USS George Washington aircraft carrier since it arrived to spearhead a growing international relief operation.
On the tiny island of Homonhon, which suffered a direct hit from the super typhoon, the mood was calmer, with villagers waiting patiently as the helicopter crew unloaded water supplies.
Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, commander of USS George Washington strike group, said that as well as bringing supplies in, its helicopter crews had “airlifted around 5,000 displaced people to safety”.
Although the relief operation took time to get up and running, aid agencies and humanitarian groups have firmly established operational posts in the flattened region’s largest city Tacloban.
Victims who survived the Philippines’ super typhoon by huddling in a cave as a tsunami-like wave obliterated their community have now made it their home — reduced to Stone Age conditions with nowhere else to go.
Manuel Isquierdo and his wife sought refuge in the limestone den as Haiyan — one of the strongest storms ever recorded — flattened the town of Mercedes on Samar island, washing away residents’ livelihoods in the devastating early hours of Nov. 8.
“It was past midnight when my wife and I decided to run up to the cave behind our house,” the fisherman told AFP.
“We were just in time. Our house crumpled to the ground soon after,” the 38-year-old added.
The couple were joined by two other families and spent more than six hours in the dark, damp cavern as rising storm surge waters edged dangerously closer and closer to its entrance, frightened that they would drown or be swept out to sea. AFP
http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/noy-now-the-disaster-czar-of-visayas
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