Disaster post-mortem: Politicking disastrous

Post-mortems are in order. The emergencies from Typhoon Haiyan in the Visayas and the earthquake in Bohol-Cebu are subsiding.

Most important: next calamity the Secretary of National Defense automatically must take charge. That’s his job as chair of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. Under him are four vice chairs: the Sec. of Interior and Local Government, for preparedness; Sec. of Social Welfare and Development, for response; Sec. of Science and Technology, prevention and mitigation; NEDA director-general, rehab.

There’s reason for the SND as disaster czar. He supervises the 220,000-strong Armed Forces of the Philippines. The AFP is trained and equipped for crisis rescue and relief. Remember the landslides in Real-Infanta, Quezon, Dec. 2004? As the Navy shipped food, blankets and tents to the seaside poblacions, Army Special Forces, lugging sacks of rice, canned food, and pots and pans, slogged down the muddy slopes, plucked survivors trapped waist-deep, and fed the interior barrio folk below.

In the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, SND Voltaire Gazmin was invisible. First news about him the day after in hardest-hit Tacloban was being incommunicado, unequipped with a most basic sat-phone. In the ensuing rescue-relief frenzy, reporters asked NDRRMC executive director Eduardo del Rosario who was in charge. Why, Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras, in coordination with Executive Sec. Paquito Ochoa, he said. Asked the same, Almendras said it was President Noynoy Aquino no less. But most visible on TV news to be “clearing (highways), feeding (survivors), and recovering (corpses) was SILG Mar Roxas.

No one knows if Gazmin felt bad being sidelined by fellow-Cabinet members. Last week when the smoke cleared, he told reporters, “We weren’t really prepared for Haiyan.” Was that a dig at Roxas, whose basic NDRRMC duty is disaster preparedness?

Second lesson: don’t play politics. Roxas and VP Jojo Binay took a beating when supporters stamped relief packs with their names. Presidential frontrunners for 2016, their ratings fell in the last surveys.

Politicking afflicted local officials. The mayor of Maribojoc, Bohol, forcibly tried to divert Philippine Red Cross relief goods, supposedly to needier barrios. The volunteers stood their ground, for in all its 63 years the PRC has always doled aid via verified rosters of calamity victims, never through politicos. It was then the barangay election campaign, in which mayors openly, illegally meddle.

Lesson 3: don’t denigrate fellow-aid workers. A faction of the Aquino admin badmouthed Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office chairwoman Margie Juico, for “doing nothing.” The intriguers had to eat humble pie when the truth came out.

Among the first things the PCSO did in the wakes of the temblor and typhoon was to rush portable power generators and water treatment plants to the ravaged sites. It also gave the Dept. of Health P50 million for logistics and other expenses. This was on top of shouldering the bills of the injured and diseased in government hospitals. Medicines for colds, coughs and diarrhea that often afflict evacuees were given out, along with sleeping mats, mosquito nets, blankets and rice. The agency also feeds the homeless flown into Manila from Leyte-Samar.

The PCSO board rushed the release of tens of millions of pesos in local government shares of lotto sales to the stricken provincial capitols: Bohol, Cebu, Leyte, Eastern Samar, Guimaras, Iloilo, Antique, Capiz, Aklan, Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental.

The intriguers’ combined work could not match all that.

(More next time)

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Nov. 25, I reported in eight short sentences a police raid on the bodog.com call center in Makati, of billionaire outlaw Calvin Edward Ayre. One of America’s ten most wanted, for illegal online gambling and money laundering, Canadian Ayre owns the firms, Bodog and Bovada.

Nov. 28, law firm Zamora-Poblador-Vasquez-Bretaña had The STAR publish a three-page-long letter “in behalf of (client) Mr. Calvin Wilson.” Lucky for the three signatories their names were edited out, saving them from public ridicule. For, the letter contained inanities, like:

• The “police did not raid the call center; rather search warrants were applied for and enforced.”

But of course search warrants were secured and used; without those there would have been no raid, only trespass. They make it sound like there can be no nabbing if arrest warrants are secured and served. What law school did they come from?

• “Bodog.com is not a business entity; it is a domain name now controlled by the U.S. government.”

I never said bodog.com is a business name. But here’s why the U.S. government now controls it. The Dept. of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized it, upon indictment of Ayre in Maryland in Feb. 2012 for enticing Americans into illegal online gambling (see www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2012/02/28/feds-indict-former-online-gambling-billionaire-calvin-ayre). Ayre is a known media basher and corruptor.

• “Calvin Wilson is not a stockholder in any of the corporations” raided.

So what? The cops were after the firms of Calvin Edward Ayre, not Calvin Wilson. Who’s that Wilson the lawyers are defending whom I never cited anyway? Is Wilson an alias of Ayre? If a legit capitalist, then why use an alias like criminals do?

• “The rape case against Wilson, baseless fabrication, has been withdrawn by the complainant.”

Ah so, Wilson IS Ayre, whom I reported to be facing a rape case in Makati. As for its withdrawal, there is in the Philippines areglo, especially by somebody as rich as Ayre -- $7.3 billion in 2004 (see www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0327/112.html).

Ayre is said to be hiding in the Philippines for 12 years now. His gambling empire has permutated into new names like bodog88.com, bovadaII.com, etc., to offer illegal online betting, even to Filipinos. It would do U.S. and Filipino authorities good to post his pictures on the Net, with a reward offer. They’ll get him in no time.

By the way, the Zamora in the law firm is Ronaldo, the congressman who recently applied for Chief Justice. Shouldn’t he be on leave and bar the firm from using his name in vain in its stationery, for clients that fight the interests of the government he serves?

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