Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Malacañang on Tuesday criticized people “engaging in a media campaign,” a day after Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez tearfully recounted to congressional investigators how the national government refused to help typhoon victims in his city.
“The President believes that those engaging in a media campaign and putting the blame on the national government are performing a disservice to the people,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma said in a press briefing.
The Palace outlined what it claimed were “empirical facts” to show that President Aquino and the national government “took all necessary steps to prepare the people [for] the dangers posed” by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan).
Asked if Macalañang was specifically referring to Romualdez, Coloma looked irked and replied, “The statement speaks for itself.”
“The people will judge the fairness of statements being made, the objectivity of the parties concerned,” he added, still refusing to mention Romualdez, whose family has been a longtime political rival of the Aquinos.
Coloma issued the statement shortly after Interior Secretary Mar Roxas held his own press conference in Camp Crame in Quezon City to hit back at Romualdez.
Inadequate aid
During a joint congressional committee hearing at the Senate on Monday, Romualdez broke down while recounting Yolanda’s onslaught and how inadequate the help his city got from the national government.
Romualdez said Roxas spoke to him about the need to “legalize everything” in Tacloban where the massive relief and recovery effort was concentrated.
“You have to be very careful because you are a Romualdez, and the President is an Aquino,” Romualdez quoted Roxas as telling him.
Romualdez’s testimony was the latest to follow international reports of the Philippine government’s slowness in responding to Yolanda, which could have killed up to 10,000 people in Eastern Visayas alone as it tore through the central Philippines on Nov. 8.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper pointed to the reported absence of the government nearly a week after the storm. The response picked up speed, aided by US military logistics.
On Tuesday, Malacañang pointed out that Roxas and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, were sent to Tacloban on Nov. 7, a day before Yolanda slammed into Leyte-Samar area.
“The President and the national government took all necessary steps to prepare the people [for] the dangers posed by Supertyphoon Yolanda, and after it struck, the government spared no effort in addressing the needs of the people in the calamity areas,” Coloma said.
Frontline government agencies were “deployed in full force to ensure maximum delivery of essential services and assistance in the affected communities,” he added, citing the Departments of National Defense, Interior and Local Government, Social Welfare and Development, and Health.
Also in the mix was the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.
Coloma said that before Yolanda’s landfall, the President addressed the nation on television, warning of the typhoon’s “severity and magnitude.”
“He specifically warned about the possibility of a storm surge in over 100 areas and urged the local authorities and the citizens to take precautionary measures,” he said.
Without naming names, the President later hit local officials for failing to prepare for Yolanda.
“Despite the breakdown of communications, instructions were relayed by the President to [Roxas and Gazmin] via satellite phone on Friday, Nov. 8,” Coloma said.
“Within 24 hours after Yolanda’s landfall, Tacloban airport was cleared by [military] and public works engineers. Military helicopters brought in troops and soldiers to replace the first responders who had been disabled. The Philippine Air Force flew in relief and troops,” he said.
Coloma reminded the public that the President flew to Tacloban on Nov. 10 “to make an initial assessment of the damage and to supervise relief operations.” He returned seven days later and “stayed until Nov. 19 to ensure the speedy delivery of relief to the most severely affected families.”
Roxas hits back
In his own news conference, Roxas sought to turn the tables on Romualdez, accusing the Tacloban mayor of “twisting the truth” about the meeting of local and national officials that President Aquino presided over in Tacloban on Nov. 14.
According to Roxas it was during that meeting that Romualdez sought help from the national government in restoring order and in leading the distribution of relief to typhoon victims in Tacloban.
“Mayor Romualdez’s allegation that the national government failed to help Tacloban is baseless and unfounded. It’s not true,” Roxas said.
“What he’s saying could just be a way to exonerate themselves from criticism. He’s now claiming that they were not able to perform their duties because the national government didn’t help them,” he said.
No politics
In a separate statement, Roxas said: “This is politics at its worst. It is unfair for the thousands of men and women who were mobilized by the national government to come to the aid of Tacloban.”
Roxas, Gazmin, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman and other senior officials will appear at a press briefing at the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) office at Camp Aguinaldo Wednesday to answer Romualdez’s allegations point by point.
Playing down Romualdez’s insinuation that politics got in the way of bringing aid to typhoon survivors, Roxas said the government provided all available resources to Tacloban.
“It’s the mayor who is trying to put political color to what had happened by making these unfounded and crooked statements. Even the typhoon victims can attest to the continuous delivery of food rations. In fact, we’re now in the rebuilding phase. They’re now moving on,” he said.
Roxas said Romualdez should “fix his memory banks” before talking about what happened during their meeting with the President, which was attended by some 30 government officials.
Roxas stayed in the Visayas for 16 days and presided over the government-led relief missions in all areas walloped by Yolanda after Gazmin, also the chair of the NDRRMC, returned to Manila three days after the typhoon struck.
Being the head of the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Roxas is automatically designated as vice chair of the national disaster council.
He appealed to Romualdez to stop peddling “lies” and focus his energy on the rehabilitation efforts in Tacloban.
Roxas also took exception to Romualdez’s claim that the military and the police failed to send in augmentation forces to replace the city police force whose members also fell victims to the typhoon
He noted that the Armed Forces deployed 3,375 soldiers to typhoon-stricken areas, most of them in Tacloban, to assist in the delivery of relief.
The Philippine National Police flew in 1,713 policemen from Calabarzon, Bicol, Central Visayas and Southern Mindanao to restore law and order in the area.
“The bulk of these forces was sent to augment the police forces in Leyte and especially in Tacloban because there were reports of widespread looting there,” Roxas said.
“This is the truth. These are the facts. There’s no other truth but this,” he said.
Search for bodies
As to Romualdez’s claim that the government did nothing to rescue victims who may have been trapped under the rubble of collapsed structures, Roxas said the Bureau of Fire Protection was designated to carry out the task of rescuing survivors and recover bodies.
“But their work was focused on [body] recovery since they were not able to enter the inner streets because of the debris that blocked the roads. That’s why there was also a designated team for the clearing of the roads,” he said.
Roxas admitted that he himself suggested that Romualdez should sign a letter delineating the role of national government agencies in the relief and rebuilding efforts in Tacloban.
The letter was never intended to unseat the mayor or grab authority from him, Roxas said.
Showing a transcript of the Nov. 14 meeting, he strongly repudiated the mayor’s claim that Roxas told him to be careful because he is a Romualdez while the President is an Aquino.
Quoting from the transcript, he supposedly told the mayor: “You have to understand we are talking very straight here. You are a Romualdez, the President is an Aquino. So we are very careful … in just taking over because we don’t (want) anything to be misconstrued, misunderstood.”
“We are being careful. The President is being careful in taking over because he does not want anything to be misconstrued. That’s the truth. There was no threat or move to remove him from his post as mayor,” Roxas said.
“This actually what I tried to prevent. We don’t want to be accused of politicking. But that is exactly what’s happening now,” he lamented.
Stop it
Amid the controversy, Bernard Kerblat, representative to the Philippines of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, called for “compassion” and for people to set aside the “acrimonious debate.”
“If I may issue a call here, perhaps I would like to invite everybody to park in between brackets this kind of acrimonious debate. Let’s reserve them for later,” Kerblat told reporters at Camp Aguinaldo on Tuesday.
“Let’s on the contrary orient our energy in a positive manner, and ask ourselves the questions: What should I do: What should I think? How should I act in order to be part of the solution toward our [countrymen] who in 32 days, 32 nights are still struggling?” he said.
Kerblat said that because of the magnitude of the destruction wrought by the storm and the staggering number of people affected, there really is “not enough shelter for everybody.”
But he insisted that there is aid and “massive effort” is being exerted, spearheaded by the government.
No investigation
Kerblat also corrected the report about a UN investigation of nondelivery of aid to remote areas ravaged by the typhoon.
He said the UN emergency coordinator, Valerie Amos, simply raised the question of whether some sparsely populated islands “may not have been reached yet.”
“She was simply asking the question. [It was] not a question of probing whether assistance has reached everybody,” Kerblat said.—With a report from Nikko Dizon
Originally posted: 5:28 pm | Tuesday, December 10th, 2013
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