Sometimes blame is good?

As I wrote the title of this article, my eleven year-old daughter happen to be passing by and asked “why?”Why is it sometimes, good to blame people?

So I carefully explained to her how disasters happen in the Philippines. First a typhoon comes but the weather bureau fails to make a correct forecast, so they get blamed for it, then local government officials fail to warn or evacuate people, so they get blamed for it.

Then the rains come and floods occur and fallen trees and logs become missiles or torpedoes that destroy houses, bridges and kill people, so the Department of Natural Resources or DENR is blamed for it. But because people did not listen to the warnings, and disobeyed the laws, then they too get blamed for it.

But every time a disaster happens and so many people are hurt and in need of help, many people in media start acting like saints and pronounce that “Now is not the time for blame and accusations.” Several of them who spent most of the year, investigating and accusing people and finding fault suddenly become so politically correct and tell others not to fight and not to blame.

So why is it sometimes good to blame?

In the first place, common sense tells us that you arrest a person as soon as they commit a crime. Law enforcers have even emphasized that a crime should be resolved within the first 24 hours or the speed and chances of it being solved becomes lower and lower.

In the case of disasters, lives are lost because people who are responsible failed to do their job and the evidence of their failure is evident within the first 24 hours. After that, everybody is focused on search and rescue, clearing and setting up evacuation centers.

Within the first 24 hours, things are clear enough to establish, through data and eyewitness reports, if a disaster happened because of a bad weather forecast or because local government officials were sleeping on the job or because residents were hard headed.

During the first 24 hours of Sendong, reports indicated that the area covered by floating logs and cut planks were 1 kilometer wide. 2 to 3 days later the area shrunk to 300 meters or less because the logs had floated out to sea or were retrieved by people for their own use.

A few days after the typhoon, roads were cleared of the illegal logs so media reports had less and less proof that there was still wide spread illegal logging in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro. After 3 days of silence, the DENR officials suddenly came out of their offices and gave statements that the total log ban had been enforced since February of this year.

Why should we inhibit ourselves from blaming people who are actually responsible? Why is it ok to find fault or lay blame on ordinary matters, but when 1000 plus Filipinos die, suddenly, members of media start saying we should put our anger and our pain on hold until after the relief operations are done.

By that time we are, as history has shown, too tired and exhausted. By then we have forgotten, or need to catch up with other pressing priorities that were set aside due to the disaster caused by others.

Yes it is good to focus on the big picture or the big problem. But it is about time that we also realize that we all have a responsibility and a specific role or job to perform. Those involved in disasters should focus on disasters, those involved in the news should report the news, and those responsible to take errant or irresponsible people to task and bring them to court should do so.

I for one am tasked to comment on the good, the bad or the ugly in society and government. If I blame the DENR or the DOST or Malacanang for a mistake, it has nothing to do with collecting relief goods or politics. People who want to help will help, but there is no reason why the people who directly or indirectly caused or contributed to a disaster should be allowed to take cover or avoid accountability.

The reason our disasters keep piling up year after year is because we concentrated on collecting relief goods but forgot to relieve our society of the criminal and the incompetent who added to the disasters.

Yes it is good to help, but sometimes it is also to good to blame.

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