Courtesy

Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis resigned earlier this week, paving the way for the dissolution of his government and the appointment of a new one.

The resignation of the three-time premier happened in the wake of a tragedy in the capital Riga. The roof of Maxima supermarket collapsed, causing the deaths of 54 shoppers. It appears the structure failed to support a roof garden being installed by the establishment.

Latvian President Andris Berzinis called the incident “murder.” As a result, Dombrovskis announced his government “takes political responsibility for the tragedy.”

What a statesman this man Dombrovskis is. He bears no direct responsibility for the accident in a privately owned supermarket. However, as leader of his government, there is no way he would stand aloof while his people mourns. He offered his resignation as a means to assuage his people’s grief.

A couple of weeks ago, as we stood aghast at the scale of destruction wrought by Typhoon Yolanda, I recalled the case of former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Criticized for understating the scale of the disaster wrought by the tsunami, Kan resigned his post days after the wave struck northeastern Japan. A new government was formed thereafter.

Neither of these two leaders did anything wrong personally. Neither of them could have prevented what happened. In the case of the quake-induced tsunami, there was no way the Japanese government could be prepared enough to deal with its deadly consequences.

Nevertheless, resignation was the correct thing to do for both men.

When a government accepts responsibility for a tragedy, that translates into political leaders taking personal responsibility for things that have gone wrong. That averts the ugly possibility of finger-pointing and blame-assignment that normally follows calamities. All the failure is absorbed by the leader, so that underlings can continue functioning to meet the exigencies of a calamity.

Harry Truman, that feisty American president, installed a plaque on his desk after he assumed the presidency. It famously read: The Buck Stops Here.

There was to be no buck-passing while he was leader. Not everybody was happy with his presidency, but the man was respected. No one ever accused him of being quick to falsely claim credit and even quicker to pass blame.

The beauty of a parliamentary system, as demonstrated by Dombrovskis and Kan, is that governments may be dissolved and then reconstituted in a day or two. Nothing assuages a nation demoralized by calamity than the acceptance of blame by its leaders and the installation of a fresh set of horses at the top after a major tragedy. Resignation is an act of courtesy to the nation.

Necro-propaganda

Should Soria be sorry?

The fate that befell the otherwise competent PNP regional director for eastern Visayas is certainly one out of the Stalinist annals.

While Yolanda’s winds were still howling, the police general expressed fear that as much as 10,000 lives could be lost to this calamity. That was off-the-cuff estimate made from a cursory scan of the extent of devastation. It was, sadly for the general, the death toll estimate quoted by the world press in the hours after the super typhoon stuck. There was no other way to drive home the mass casualty nature of this calamity.

Shortly after, Gen. Soria was relieved of his post, never to be seen nor heard in the crucial, grief-laden days after the calamity. The officials speaking on behalf of Soria said the police general was stressed out and needed rest. Soria, apparently, was not allowed to say anything on his behalf.

All of us, to be sure, need some rest after all the frantic days of rushing relief to the hapless victims of a cruel force of nature. Only Soria, it seems, needed to be relieved of his post to get rest.

No one really believes the official version about Soria’s psychological and emotional condition. We have here a tough and seasoned police officer not easily awed by calamity.

It seems the regional director unintendedly annoyed the powers-that-be with his early estimate of casualties — an estimate, by the way, that underscored in the world’s mind the urgency of the situation, precipitating a massive inflow of aid.

After Gen. Soria made his estimate, a bizarre numbers game ensued. The NDRRMC body count slowed. More bureaucratic procedures were installed before numbers were tallied. The President went on CNN declaring the death toll at between 2,000 and 2,500.

The NDRRMC, in its latest official tally, admits to a casualty toll of 5,560. Nearly two thousand are officially listed as missing. The wounded run into many thousands more. Slowly, the official count is moving distressingly closer to Soria’s impromptu estimate.

The other day, someone from the PNP echelon made it known that Soria may be restored to his post. Of course, he should.

It was a mistake to persecute Soria for making a rough estimate of casualties very early in the disaster. Doing so merely underscored the pettiness that stained this government’s response to the calamity, including assigning blame to the local governments washed away by the storm surge.

The death toll is sad, to be sure. Each death is one death too many. It is complete insanity to try and manipulate the death toll to please the powerful, something in the league of necro-propaganda. That simply steals the credibility from the official effort to manage this calamity.

If government’s response to the calamity was called inept, that is warranted. Nothing screams ineptitude more than Mar Roxas and Volt Gazmin rushing into the storm’s killing zone forgetting to bring their satellite phones.