Pop quiz, hotshot: You’re President of the Republic and you know a strong typhoon is barreling towards the southern part of the country. Common sense, which you admittedly have never been accused of having, tells you that you should do your duty and “monitor the situation,” possibly with rain boots and slicker ready to go to the stricken areas as soon as the weather clears.
But you’ve also committed to attend something billed “the royal wedding” of two movie stars who campaigned for you in 2010. It’s the wedding of the year, after all, and it’s sponsored by a big broadcast network that is the chief rival of the one where you just had a one-on-one interview with a stand-up comedian, of all people.
What do you do? Why, if you’re President Noynoy Aquino, you go to the wedding, naturally.
Just a short hop from the areas ravaged by typhoon Seniang, in nearby Borneo, Indonesian President Widodo rushed to the area where the ill-fated AirAsia plane had crashed en route to Singapore from Surabaya. The popular Widodo apparently didn’t have a royal wedding to attend – or if he did, he knew that he had to be with the families of the crash victims instead of hobnobbing with movie stars and their hangers-on.
Of course, I expect the defenders of Aquino, in and out of his government, to respond that the President needn’t be present in the areas devastated by the typhoon to show that he is, as his propagandists say, “on top of the situation.” And to a certain extent, they would be correct – the President doesn’t need to be sloshing around in the muck and the mud of a disaster area for relief work to happen.
But they would be wrong to assume that Aquino’s not acting as best man in the wedding of Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera would be held against him, if he gave as his reason for not going the fact that he had to do his job. Heck, I’m even willing to grant that if Aquino skipped the ceremonies marking the death anniversary of national hero Jose Rizal to monitor the typhoon, he would have gained more respect and admiration.
But Aquino has always acted as if people who demand his attention during times of calamity are imposing on him and telling him what to do. And, as he famously said, when he was asked if was going to the wake of slain transgender Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude, he never visits dead people whom he does not know.
And, ultimately, Aquino will be haunted by the words he uttered to one citizen in Tacloban City in the aftermath of the destruction caused by typhoon Yolanda: “But you’re still alive, right?”
Typhoons and other calamities, of course, come and go – with scary regularity, truth be told. But how many royal weddings, no matter how fake, can you attend as best man, anyway?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: For a President who was elected on the strength of a carefully-crafted populist image, Aquino really doesn’t really care if his actions are perceived as anti-people.
But he truly cares about showbiz weddings, we now know for sure. I hope, after he steps down from the presidency, someone will offer him a job in the movies.
Who knows? Maybe he’ll even find himself a showbiz bride and get a star-studded wedding – and he won’t ever be bothered by people who want to see him care about poor, calamity-stricken people that he doesn’t personally know.
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I truly believe that, presidential scheduling problems and priorities aside, the government may have been lulled into complacency by the relatively more benign onslaught of – and better official response to – typhoon Ruby early last month. The only major victim of Ruby, after all, was Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, who just had to pretend like he was an accomplished dirt bike rider in Samar.
Despite the claims to the contrary yesterday of a Malacanang spokesman, who described the preparations for Seniang as “comprehensive,” the body count of the latest typhoon is proof enough that the authorities once again dropped the ball. And whatever else the palace may say about its supposed preparedness, 50-plus people still died; they were probably not known to Aquino personally, but their families knew them and are now grieving because of their loss.
These people need to be consoled, to be aided and to be convinced that they are as important as campaign workers who are also high-profile movie personalities. They need food and water, new homes and clothing and jobs.
Above all, they need a government that does not need them only when there is a coming election, when they will once again be promised everything they could possibly want. And they don’t need to be lied to about preparations that they, of all people, know were never made.