EDITORIAL – Finally, Lacson is doing his job

Finally, former senator and now rehabilitation czar Panfilo Lacson is doing his job. He has shifted to attack mode. After letting pass the first anniversary of super typhoon Yolanda, and letting the anger and frustration over government's slow and inadequate response to the ensuing humanitarian crisis simmer down, he is now doing what he does best -- going after his and his boss's political enemies.

His first target was the most obvious, Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez, who is a Romualdez and not an Aquino like his boss, as pointedly pointed out by Mar Roxas a few days after Yolanda when instead of trying to help the interior and local government secretary launched into a lecture on politics and genealogy. Lacson picked up the quarrel where Aquino and Roxas left off, forced to do so in face of public disgust at the turn of events.

The appointment by Aquino of Lacson as rehabilitation czar was so useless and unnecessary that no one even remembers when the appointment was made. But Aquino had to find something for Lacson to do because Lacson himself made it clear he wanted a job in the administration. And anyone who knows Lacson knows it is always best to have him on your side than with the other side.

But because the job of rehabilitation czar is so useless and unnecessary -- even Lacson himself at one time complained he had no real powers -- all that Lacson was able to show for it since assuming office was to launch a big and thick book about his rehabilitation plans just days before the Yolanda anniversary. Most people whose lives still await rehabilitation do not understand the big deal about having such plans published in a book.

But then, if that is the way Lacson wants to do things, there is really nothing the typhoon victims can do but wait and see what the pages of the book have in store for them. Interestingly, while on a visit to Cebu, Lacson admitted having completely missed out on an entire island off northern Cebu with several hundred people in it who got left out. Maybe a revised edition of the book will include the lost chapter on this missing island and its inhabitants.

Anyway, his book published and launched, and for whatever it's worth now safely tucked into the annals of recorded history, Lacson can now start picking as many quarrels that his boss has the time to pick himself. The good thing about Lacson is that he fears no one in a quarrel. His record is a golden book of quarrels with some of the best there are in the business of quarreling.

As to being a rehabilitation czar, maybe he needs to pile a mountain high stack of his books upon which he can climb to check his surroundings. Without seeing things in the right perspective he can get distracted by what he hears, especially if all he hears is Romualdez and not the real voices of those truly in dire need of "immediate" government attention, never mind if, a year after Yolanda, the word immediate already sounds as flat and meaningless as the term "rehabilitation czar."