2013: man-made disasters worsened natural ones

2013 was a year of extreme calamities in the land. It opened with south Mindanao reeling from Super Typhoon Pablo that oddly emanated from the equator to ravage erstwhile spared so unprepared communities. Then recurred landslides in east Mindanao, storms in north Luzon, and floods in Greater Manila. In finale struck a strong earthquake in Bohol-Cebu, and the world’s meanest cyclone ever, Yolanda, in the whole of the Visayas and north Palawan.

Filipinos rightly linked the natural disasters to man-made ones. Official neglect and politicking somehow had cost thousands of lives and billions of pesos in livelihood and property. Local officials were caught unaware or plain unmindful of their locales’ geo-hazards. Like, the mayor of Tacloban whined that weathermen had not explained Super Typhoon Yolanda’s oncoming storm surges. In truth, every three years right after elections, state and private scientists lecture in provincial capitols and city halls on disaster types and mitigations. Although or precisely because coming from a long-reigning political clan, the mayor apparently did not deem it important to attend.

In Maribojoc, Bohol, the mayor demanded that Red Cross volunteers distribute relief goods in his village instead of where they already had verified the roster of quake victims. The town chief was only covering up the fact that, in gross negligence, he had not stockpiled on emergency food and medicines. Wrongly the Secretary of Defense, as head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, took his side. This is the same national emergency point man that flew to Tacloban on the eve of Yolanda’s landfall unequipped with even a basic satellite phone. The lapse rendered him incommunicado during the critical first 36 hours of catastrophe. Presidential wannabes in 2016 filled up the vacuum to promote themselves with relief packs emblazoned with their names.

In Luzon and Metro Manila officials themselves caused the floods. Governors illegally had erected family fish pens that choked waterways; mayors had abetted illicit quarrying of black sand on coasts and nickel ore on hillsides; congressmen had wasted drainage funds on self-aggrandizing basketball courts and bus stops.

Three intertwined political evils worsened the people’s misery: dynasties, fraudulent elections, pork barrels. Politicos did not drill in emergency response but instead exacerbated mangrove denudation and dynamite fishing. Disaster preparedness only got in the way of the top priority of keeping their families in power. They alternated with spouses, parents, siblings or offspring in national and local posts by cheating the elections. This way they monopolized government discretionary funds. In Congress such funds amounted to P200 million per senator and P70 million per congressman – per year.

2013 will end with voters still in the dark if their votes last May truly were counted. Stopping the precinct tallying halfway, the Comelec had proclaimed winners in a rush, with speed, not accuracy, of essence. It blamed snafus on telcos, sour-grape losers and “ignorant voters,” to muddle its waiving of all prescribed safeguards in the precinct count optical scanners. Election manipulators, backed by con technicians from among the 16,000 whom the poll body had hired to fix bugs in the 2010 presidential poll, had a field day selling pre-fabricated tallies. Losers had no paper trail to back their complaints. The Comelec kept altering its website of “final” results, and using intelligence funds illicitly drawn from Malacañang to divert public notice. Up to this month the election agency slyly distracted attention from a very revealing Senate hearing by controversially ordering 422 lawmakers and local officials to step down for supposed defective campaign spending reports. Drowned out of the headlines were testimonies of government info-technologists about strange markings in last May’s ballots that produced “accidental senators.”

Exposed midyear was a P10-billion pork-barrel scam by three senators and five congressmen in 2007-2009, using fixer Janet Lim Napoles. At least 15 more senators and 180 congressmen are said to have filched their discretionary Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) via eight other fixers.

Filipinos expressed their outrage in the social media and citywide demonstrations. Bolder citizens scratched or blocked in traffic lawmakers’ vehicles with No. 7 or 8 license plates. The Supreme Court responded by overturning two previous rulings, this time abolishing the PDAF by a 14-0 vote.

There remains the presidential “pork,” the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). In 2011-2012 it consisted of P142 billion in Executive agency budgets impounded because unspent midyear or saved yearend. Malacañang claims it was re-allotted honestly. Yet, at least P13 billion went to Congress as additional discretionary funds for lawmakers. Of that amount, P197 million went to the same three senators accused with Napoles of plundering their PDAF. The budget secretary refuses to divulge how else the rest of the P142-billion DAP was spent.

What a pitiful country!

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