Ompong: Leadership and coordination

The news of the impending arrival of Typhoon Ompong  (international name Mangkhut) was a source of concern, fearing it would be as bad as Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan).  I observed how the President convened the entire Cabinet and assigned cabinet officials to the affected areas.  Having consulted many who are involved in disaster resilience, it was the consensus that the  “hands-on” leadership  taken by the President resulted in the success of the overall coordination of the government activities.   This was in stark contrast to how government reacted to previous natural disasters particularly Yolanda (Haiyan).  Commendations are clearly in order and even seconded by a Washington Post column of Amanda Erikson:

“And this time, as news of Mangkhut spread, officials had a much clearer idea of what to do. Authorities began delivering food and clean water ahead of the storm in order to make sure people could access lifesaving goods even if roads and airports were closed. Police officers and soldiers prepared to head to storm-ravaged areas quickly to maintain order and help with rescue efforts. Thousands were evacuated late last week, before Mangkhut hit.

The result of these efforts is that Mangkhut, a storm nearly as powerful as Haiyan, has produced fewer fatalities (compared to 6000 in Haiyan). There were 64 confirmed deaths in the Philippines at the time of writing, a number “far lower than officials had feared in the days before the storm made landfall early Saturday on the Philippines’ largest and most populous island,” the New York Times reported. The paper did caution that “it could be days or weeks before the storm’s true human toll is known.”

Still, the organized response is a rare bit of good climate-change news for the Philippines. So it’s not surprising that the Philippines takes the threat of climate change seriously. The government invests two percent of the national budget in climate-change adaptation and risk reduction. It has pledged to cut its carbon emissions 70 percent by 2030, one of the most ambitious targets in the world.”

The relative success of the government’s response can be attributed to the President’s direct involvement in the disaster response process which have been fine tuned following lessons learned from Typhoon Yolanda. But it also shows the fundamental weakness of the current organizational structure for disaster management in that it required Presidential intervention to work. The President’s initiative to create a cabinet level Department of Disaster  Resilience underscores his recognition of this organizational flaw. 

Performance sells

Indeed, the above Ompong story lives up to this “slogan” which I learned when I was in sales school. Regrettably I can’t say the same of every aspect of the current administration. There continues to exist the daily hassles which ordinary Filipinos have to put up with every day – horrendous traffic, inadequate infrastructure, fear for their safety, indifferent public service, bribery and corruption, airport facilities notorious for its inefficiency and licenses and plates that have yet to be delivered. To be sure these are problems that have been there before. People who voted for Rodrigo Duterte the Mayor to be their President wanted him to replicate nation-wide what he had done for the city of Davao. They weren’t looking for grandiose plans to make the nation great again which they had tired of hearing from politicians before. They were looking for someone to deliver them from these daily hassles. Unfortunately, the President has too often been distracted by criticism of his administration that there have been times when he has taken his eye off the ball. But when he is focused as he had been with Typhoon Ompong, he delivers. He needs to focus on these basic issues and now more than ever, to the looming threat to our hitherto good economic performance. The inflation bedeviling the economy is but a symptom of a deeper, underlying economic malaise. As I had learned in management, there’s only one way to quiet the critics and naysayers and satisfy your stockholders – deliver performance.  The people are looking for President Duterte to do so in the remaining years of his term with a laser-like focus on what they voted him for.

(Next week, my column will dwell on lessons learned from Ompong).