Instead of an empathetic statesman-like response to a disaster that has killed thousands, destroyed towns and affected 14 million Filipinos, Mr Aquino has seemed aloof and looked to deflect blame for the slow response to one of the most powerful storms on record, critics say.
Veteran Manila commentator Amando Doronila said the day the typhoon struck was a ''day the government disappeared''.
''It laid bare the disturbing issue: Where is the government? More specifically, who is in charge during emergency,'' he wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer which ran the headline: ''Who's in charge here?''
He said survivors on the island of Leyte greeted Mr Aquino's party as ''harbingers of despair''.
During a visit to the fishing town of Guiuan on Samar Island, where the typhoon hit with gusts of 315km/h, only a few dozen survivors turned up to hear Mr Aquino speak and most were kept beyond hearing distance by rope. ''There was no empathy for what the people are going through just to survive,'' a Philippine journalist who was there said later.
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