EDITORIAL - There is no wrong estimate

The regional police director of Eastern Visayas, Chief Superintendent Elmer Soria, has been relieved of his post for saying that 10,000 people may have perished in Tacloban when the world's strongest typhoon to make landfall in recorded history nearly wiped Leyte's capital city off the map.

Two things could have happened -- either Noynoy Aquino himself had Soria relieved, or PNP chief Alan Purisima did, to ingratiate himself to Noynoy. Purisima has never been known to do anything important unless it has the blessings of Noynoy.

Noynoy, on the other hand, has a thing for low casualty figures. Of course, that should be the desire of everybody else. But casualty figures are not something that should drive anyone so crazy as to actually fire someone for simply making an estimate he does not agree with.

Regardless of what Noynoy thinks, or Purisima blindly agrees with, an estimate is an estimate. People do not need to be rocket scientists to understand what an estimate is. Besides, any casualty figure in the wake of a natural calamity, whether high or low, is not something that governments get blamed for.

That is precisely why natural calamities are defined by law as acts of God, because the determination of how high or low casualty figures may go, they are never influenced by any act or omission of man. These are matters that are simply beyond man's influence.

Unless, of course, you have the mind of Noynoy. To Noynoy, the mere act of issuing an estimate that he does not agree with is a crime, something that General Soria learned only too late. Noynoy has a mindset that brooks no disagreement. Either you are with him, even in estimations, or you are against him.

Whether the estimate of Soria that 10,000 may have perished is true or not does not really matter. Every death is a loss. Whether the casualties are 10 or 10,000, the fact that human lives were lost so suddenly and tragically will always diminish us.

In fact, it is not the number of dead, whose deaths came because God willed it, that makes the tragedy so sad. What is truly regrettable is how the response had been so late and inadequate and spelled the difference between whether the living should go on living or die because Noynoy was too mesmerized with lowering figures.