What made czar Ping Lacson cry
He did not actually cry, but Panfilo Lacson was touched when he encountered and heard stories arising from the rubble created by super typhoon Yolanda.
First was when he stepped down the helicopter that took him to Guian, Leyte on December 13, three days after he took his oath as Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery. He saw people on the ground smiling. They were homeless victims of the worst typhoon on record , but they were glad to see people from government coming to help them, Ping said at the Bulong Pulungan sa Sofitel media forum.
The second was the story of a boy who returned P3,000 to a private donor because there were only five in his family; they had been given the allotted P15,000 for a family of eight members. “My father told me to return the P3,000.”
The third was about a mother of four who walked more than a kilometer to return P1,500 to the Chu Chi Foundation as she had worked for only three days; the amount allotted for her was P5,000.
The most unbelievable yet was the story of two young girls, Lila and Malaya, who visited relatives in Tanauan, Leyte. Seeing that school kids had no school materials, the two told their grandfather, David Amado, that they would raise $1,000 back in the US to buy books for the children. The old man could not believe it, but after a few weeks, the girls had raised $120,000 from donations of classmates and residents of their community in the US.
Those incidents so touched Ping. “Those are stories of raw heroism, of raw honesty,” he said. And to think that Ping’s image had been that of a cold, heartless policeman.
Those incidents are not contained in the 8,000-page, eight volume Yolanda Comprehensive Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan (YCRRP) that Ping presented to President Aquino at the Manila Memorial Park on August 1, the fifth death anniversary of the late and former President Cory Aquino.
The P170.9-billion plan allots budgets for resettlement, infrastructure, livelihood, and social services. The plan covers 171 typhoon-hit municipalities, including Tacloban City, Cebu, Iloilo, Eastern Samar and Leyte.
Under Memorandum Order 62, the former PNP general and senator was tasked to draft the master plan for the Yolanda Corridor ravaged by Yolanda in November last year. So challenged by a formidable, but doable task, he asked friends, including renowned architect Jun Palafox and urban planner Danny Antonio of AIM (who became one of his undersecretaries) to help draw the plan. His original staff was himself and Domingo; today he has 104 people who are paid by US Aid and United Nations Development Fund.
Asked why it took eight months to come up with the plan that P-Noy has yet to approve, the 65-year-old native of Imus, Cavite, raised his arms as though in disbelief. It could not be done overnight: the mending of the damage inflicted by Yolanda within the 100-kilometer Yolanda corridor: more than 11 million individuals affected; 5,600 killed, and millions rendered homeless and displaced. Damage to agriculture and infrastructure was estimated to be P30 billion.
The President’s choice of Lacson as rehab czar came as a surprise to some observers who heard him criticize actions of the President. What’s more, he was considered a most controversial political figure. He first served as Philippine National Police director general for two years, and as senator from 2001 to 2013. As a senator for 12 years, he was always engaged in a word war with the feisty Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
A high point in his career was when then President Joseph Estrada appointed him to head the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) and also to serve as director-general of the Philippine National Police.
As President Estrada’s chief operative against organized crime, Lacson was linked to several murders. He was implicated in a supposed shootout between police officers under the Task Force Habagat and members of the Kuratong Baleleng crime syndicate. Eleven members of Kuratong Baleleng were killed. Last December 2012, the Supreme Court affirmed a Quezon City court’s decision dismissing the multiple murder charges against Ping and his co-accused.
While he was a senator he was accused in the killings of well-known publicist Salvador Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbeto in November 2000. On January 5, 2010, he went into hiding just before an arrest warrant against him was issued by a Manila Regional Trial Court. A year later, the Court of Appeals withdrew the murder charges against him, citing his accuser Mancao as “not a credible and trustworthy witness.” On March 26, 2011, Ping returned to Manila after being cleared by the courts.
Perhaps it’s Ping’s non-nonsense drive against the corrupt that made the President choose him to head the post which, Ping told Bulong Pulungan, has been “the most challenging of government jobs (I) ever held.”
In an earlier press conference, Presidential Communications Operations Secretary Herminio Coloma said the President commended Secretary Lacson “for the comprehensive and detailed plan based on validated post-disaster assessment reports of affected provinces.”
“Once the CRRP is approved, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) will frontload the funds to the implementing agencies that will take center stage in the next phase in order to rebuild the communities and improve the lives of the survivors,” Coloma said.
He said the DBM has made available around P137 billion sourced from the existing budget, adding the residual amount of P36 billion will be sourced from the proposed 2015 national budget.
He said the rehabilitation plan also addresses concerns like climate change adaptation, environment, gender-sensitive needs and equality, and disaster preparedness for future hazards, among others.
“We are hoping to achieve at least 80 percent completion of these priority projects before the end of the President’s term,” Ping said, adding that the plan includes long-term projects that will entail support of the next administration.
He said the CRRP incorporated the cluster action plans from government agencies and rehabilitation plans of local government agencies from the Yolanda corridor; the Recovery Assistance for Yolanda (RAY I) and the draft Implementation for Results (I4R) prepared by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA); the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) of the Office of Civil Defense; and plans and programs formulated by Office of the Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery (OPARR) following an overarching principle of “Building Back Better and Safer.”
Ping said adequate safeguards are in place to prevent the misuse of rehabilitation funds. His office plans to set up a website, dubbed the Electronic Monitoring Platform, Accountability and Transparency Hub for Yolanda (eMPATHY) to watch over fund disbursements and status of projects. It seems with Ping and his team on his side, President PNoy is really on the track to “tuwid na daan.”
“This is part of OPARR’s initiative to achieve transparency and accountability in all stages of the rehabilitation process,” Ping said. He added that OPARR coordinators, field data collectors and technical experts have been deployed in the 14 provinces severely affected by Yolanda.
Ping sums up the effect of the rehabilitation efforts: “It will be the President’s legacy — to rebuild people’s lives for the better.”
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