Rehab czar

Not a few people question the appointment of former senator Panfilo Lacson as rehabilitation czar by President Benigno Aquino III last week and with good reason.

Those old enough to remember his days under the late president Ferdinand Marcos know him as a fearsome law enforcer who executed criminal masterminds without fear of reprisal.

A few decades later, he was appointed by then vice president Joseph Estrada in his capacity as chairman of the defunct Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC) to spearhead field operations and this resulted in the infamous Kuratong Baleleng massacre of robbery suspects in the ’90s.

So what does the former PNP chief-turned-senator have that other more qualified former officials don’t, like former transportation and communications secretary Jose de Jesus, who once served as public works and highways secretary under the President’s mother, the late president Corazon Aquino?

Aside from suspicion that he may bolster the floundering 2016 presidential ambitions of Interior and Local Governments Secretary Mar Roxas, Lacson’s law enforcement background and perceived “Mr. Clean” image—he gave up his pork barrel along with former senator Joker Arroyo long before Janet Lim Napoles came along and made several exposés on former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s husband “Big Mike” Arroyo—props him up as a leader that, aside from President Aquino, can mobilize the large government bureaucracy at his disposal to speedup the rehabilitation of typhoon-hit areas at the end of or even before the President’s term expires on 2016.

Lacson gave the impression that he is a cooperative type of leader by saying that the private sector should take the lead in rebuilding northern Cebu and Central Philippines. How he would go about enforcing that proposal remains to be seen in the next few months.

For northern Cebu, the provincial government created its own task force to oversee the rehabilitation of towns hit by supertyphoon Yolanda.

Lacson’s statement and the fact that Aquino and Gov. Hilario Davide III toe the Liberal Party line, is an assurance that the Capitol task force will align with the national rehab czar’s intended framework to let other lead in the rebuilding.

What is important perhaps is for Lacson to head a summit or achieve a simple meeting of the minds of all local officials of typhoon-hit areas for a coordinate approach to rehabilitate their communities.

It’s a complex task of coordination and leadership especially since public funds are not enough or available fast enough for the work at hand.

We hope Lacson with local officials and the private sector get behind each other and ensure that this immense work is accomplished, and that storm-struck communities not only survive but thrive in the face of more typhoons and calamities to come.