Aquino sisters: Their damage control failed

I was at the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) waiting for my flight to Cagayan de Oro last Tuesday when I saw on ANC an interview with Presidential sisters Kris Aquino, Pinky Aquino-Abellada and Ballsy Aquino-Cruz defending the President from the criticism that he was partying at the PSG Christmas party last Sunday rather than attending to the needs of the suffering people in Northern Mindanao who were rendered homeless by Typhoon “Sendong”.

 In truth, that incident was merely blown out of proportion by anti-Aquino bloggers, which the mainstream media further magnified. A simple explanation or apology would have sufficed and that would have ended this fiasco. I would have even believed the explanation of the Palace sycophants that the President didn’t stay long in that party. But then the stories coming from the Palace insiders didn’t even match. One even dared to say that the party happened a week earlier, which only proves that they were lying!

 With the negative publicity against Pres. PNoy brewing like a storm stronger than Typhoon “Sendong,” suddenly the Aquino sisters made their public appearance on ANC giving various explanations as to why that PSG party was not cancelled in deference to the disaster in Mindanao.

 What incensed many people watching it on the TV set in the airport was when Kris Aquino said that PNoy’s critics should give the President and their family a break! I could hear the gasp of those watching saying, “They wanted their brother to be President, then they should know that public servants should give priority to our people, especially in times of disasters. When their mother died, the entire nation stopped to honor her funeral. It is time for the Aquino family to give back to the Filipino people and not ask for a Christmas break especially when people in Mindanao cannot even think of that Christmas is just a few days away. Shame!”

 I have no doubt that the appearance of the Aquino sisters on ANC did more damage to the President because people perceive them as part of his damage control mechanism. That it was the first time that the Aquino sisters appeared on TV to defend their brother also revealed the gravity of the problem… and only showed that the President was indeed partying.

 While the AirPhil Q400 Turbo-prop plane was on its final approach to Cagayan de Oro, I could see the massive debris or flotsam a couple of kilometers from the shore. Most of them were house materials, trees and logs; proof that the total log ban imposed by Pres. PNoy wasn’t heeded at all.

 I also saw a video that was shot early morning Saturday that showed the waters starting to recede. There is no doubt that by midnight, the waters rose to around 20 feet. Julius Dakay, Senior Project Manager of Dakay Construction that is building the Paseo del Rio, a shopping mall, hotel and convention center owned by Mrs. Ochie Pelaez, told me that the waters rose to the second floor of the construction site. Dakay Construction lost 8 containers and all its portable staff houses where Julius was staying and their equipment was inundated.

 At this point, the immediate need of Cagayanons, and I guess this also goes for the people in Iligan City, is for a water filtration system. There is still a lot of water that they can get from many springs around the area, but it needs to be filtered. Meanwhile, the Rio Verde Water System of Mr. Pepito Alvarez was a total wreck … hence many residents relying on their service have zero water.

 Mr. Elpie Paras of PARASAT Cable toured me in the disaster areas and it was really evident that the floodwaters rose so high. Even his mother’s home, which is 500 meters away from the Cagayan de Oro River, was flooded about a foot high. Elpie also drove me to the Pelaez Bridge some 10 kilometers away from the shoreline where the river was its widest and there you can see that the sides of the river were scoured and you can gauge that even that far away, the floodwaters were already several feet high.

 Now it can be told that the majority of the poor squatters whose homes and shanties were washed away by the raging river actually lived in sandbars in the middle or along the side of the CDO River. Why did the Local Government Unit allow these people to build there escapes me. Perhaps no one cared to warn them that they were living along high risk areas that can be affected during strong rains.

 If there is anything positive with the visit of Pres. PNoy to Cagayan de Oro, he ordered the DENR and CDO City Mayor Vicente Emano not to allow those who lost their homes to return to the original location of their homes in order to prevent a repeat of this disaster from happening. This is what we call political will, which unfortunately few of our politicians have.

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