EDITORIAL - Mayor upstages president

When President Aquino returned last Sunday to typhoon-ravaged areas in Eastern Visayas, it was probably because he wanted to hear it directly from the people affected. Specifically, he wanted to know first-hand what was needed on the ground in these areas.

At one such briefing telecast live from Guiuan, Easter Samar, the president was given a rundown by its mayor. But instead of going direct to the point and telling how badly Guiuan was hit and what was needed to get it back on its feet, the mayor launched into a long narrative spiked with his own personal experiences.

Supertyphoon Yolanda, said to have been the strongest typhoon the world has ever seen make a landfall in all of recorded history, made that historic landfall in the early hours of morning on November 8 in Guiuan, before destroying Tacloban and continuing on across the Visayas in a rampage of death, mayhem, and destruction.

But the mayor of Guiuan started his narrative to the president with what he was already doing way before the storm. He kicked off his tale with his activities on November 5, about how, in pursuance to the directive of our “mahal na pangulo” for zero casualties, he was already preparing for the disaster.

Actually, he ought to be commended for the disaster preparedness to which he had subjected his place and people. But there were just too many instances of self-reference in his very long spiel that it became very apparent he was laying it very thick for himself before the president.

To the credit of Aquino, who certainly must have been aching to be done with this man so he can go to other areas that needed his attention, he went along and into what eventually must have evolved into a pretext of showing keen interest.

Every now and then the president would scribble something down. Whether it was to take note of something important or simply to doodle and ward away boredom, no one had the temerity to try and find out. But it would be no exaggeration to say that the mayor gave Aquino what amounted to a State of Guiuan Address.

Sporting a bandaged hand, the mayor even recounted how he escaped with his life, and not even a not-too-subtle-hint in the form of a bottle of water being proffered to interrupt his speech could stop him from plodding on with his “I and ako” laced spiel. In the end, most people watching the live telecast switched to other channels and missed knowing whether the mayor got the aid he needed. In all probability he did. Aid, after all, was the purpose of the trip. But the mayor got so much more than he needed -- nearly an hour of promoting himself free of charge.