P-Noy’s grave sins due to Typhoon Yolanda

It’s exactly a year on Nov. 8 after Super Typhoon Yolanda struck and the news headline at the bottom of the front page of the Philippine STAR last Wednesday said a lot when it blared “Still no final Yolanda death toll.” The article said that the official count stopped around 4,000. Presidential Communications Sec. Herminio Coloma Jr. said, “As you know there is still an ongoing process of identification of the remains of the victims which is led by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).” Then he goes on saying that he will consult with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) on the final death toll.

I’ve got to hand it to Mr. Coloma how he could lie with a straight face before the media. Pray, Mr. Coloma, tell me how much is the budget for the NBI to identify those corpses? I was recently in Tacloban and I didn’t see any groups digging those graves so that they could be forensically identified? He says that he will ask the NDRRMC on the final death toll. Surely he must have known by now that Pres. Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III told the NDRRMC to stop the count when it was nearing 8,000.

Come now, the Filipino people especially those in Tacloban know why the President stopped the count…so that he won’t get embarrassed if and when the death toll would reach more than 10,000 and end up proving PNP Region 8 Director Elmer Soria right. The PNP regional director was fired by the President as his first act when he went to Tacloban after the typhoon exited. This is why today no one knows exactly how many people perished!

But an NGO wrote me to answer the query that we wrote before that his NGO group brought along 20,000 cadaver bags just days after the typhoon struck and they ran out of bags in just a few days with people asking for more cadaver bags. P-Noy cannot comprehend what he did by ordering the NDRRMC to stop the counting of those who perished.

This President doesn’t realize that the families of missing persons have to wait for seven years before they can be officially declared as dead, then and only then can husbands who lost their wives or wives who lost their husbands remarry and rebuild their families. All this has happened just because we have a President who vowed that the death toll from Yolanda wouldn’t reach 10,000! Still, a year later, no one knows the exact figure!

On this issue alone, the President should have quit in shame for failing the Filipino people at the time of their need. But then he has no shame! So his sins against the Filipino people continue to pile up. Perhaps one of the biggest sins of P-Noy is that report that the Aquino regime could only account for $14 million in donations given by foreign governments and aid groups. This is a miniscule figure from the reported $600 million that the Philippines received from these foreign governments and aid groups.

Surely if Mr. Aquino has a face to show to the world on the first anniversary of the strongest typhoon to strike planet Earth, he ought to come up with a full accounting of that aid money, otherwise those who gave us money or aid in our time of need wouldn’t trust this President anymore if and when we get hit by another natural disaster. Again as a Filipino, I am ashamed that this government failed to account for most of the money! Shame on the Aquino regime for this unprecedented incompetence!

There are more sins that the Aquino regime committed against the Filipino people and the most glaring of all can be pinned on the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) where relief goods from foreign donors were repacked and put in DSWD bags… obliterating the names of these donor countries. Worse, as the United Kingdom found out, some of those relief goods found their way in stores in Metro Manila. Yet there was no investigation done on this because the Aquino regime feared that this petty corruption might be linked to the DSWD Secretary.

Finally a year later, we still haven’t learned our lessons from this natural disaster. Our charismatic group, Bukas Loob sa Diyos (BLD) asked their BLD chapters in the US to help send relief goods last November. By December, the New Jersey BLD came up with three containers of used clothes and foodstuff. It arrived in March this year and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) held the shipment because of a law prohibiting the import of used clothing. Surely the President could have made this an exemption, but he didn’t. Just another act of incompetence from a student government!

Finally, we will never forget the political drama that ensued between DILG Sec. Mar Roxas who told Mayor Alfred Romualdez, “You have to understand you are a Romualdez and the President is an Aquino so we just want to legalize. If not legalized, well okay. You are in charge. We can’t help you. Bahala ka na sa buhay n’yo!” Coming from a DILG Secretary, Mar Roxas ought to resign in shame. But then like his boss…they both have no shame!

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