MikeLigalig.com

November 24, 2013
Lindsay Murdoch
South-East Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media


The Philippine President is being likened to George W. Bush after hurricane Katrina, writes Lindsay Murdoch in Cebu.



Philippine President Benigno Aquino, right, distributes disaster relief items to survivors of Typhoon Haiyan during his visit to Palo. Photo: Reuters


During the first three years of his rule, Benigno Aquino carefully crafted his image as a corruption fighter who was turning the Philippines away from being the Sick Man of Asia into one of the region's fastest growing economies.

But President Aquino is facing the biggest crisis of his presidency as his administration struggles to help the 4 million people made homeless by typhoon Haiyan, which swept across the central Philippine islands on November 8. Reconstruction is estimated to cost almost $6 billion.

Criticism of the way the 53-year-old son of former president and democracy hero Cory Aquino has handled the disaster has been scathing since he played down the extent of the devastation in the first few days, saying initial death toll estimates were too high and blaming the ''emotional trauma'' of some officials.

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After the scale of the disaster became clear, Mr Aquino ordered an investigation into ''lapses'' by local government, inflaming decades-old enmity between his powerful political clan and another led by Imelda Marcos, the wife of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Mr Aquino pointed his finger at Alfred Romualdez, 51, the nephew of Mrs Marcos and the mayor of the coastal town of Tacloban on Leyte where the most deaths occurred.

''It appears [Tacloban] was not that prepared, let's just say, compared to other areas,'' Mr Aquino told reporters in Manila the day after the typhoon hit.

But Mr Romualdez defended his preparations, saying they were approved by national government officials 24 hours beforehand. ''They said everything was OK,'' he said.

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The scandal broke in July, when a whistleblower revealed that up to half the money being allocated to local projects from discretionary government funds was being stolen.

Amid widespread outrage over the claims, Mr Aquino went on national television in October to declare: ''I have never stolen. I am not a thief. I am the one who goes after thieves.''

Last week, the Philippine Supreme Court ruled the scheme unconstitutional, a decision some analysts said might work to Mr Aquino's advantage by allowing him to allocate funds directly to typhoon construction efforts.

A political analyst at the University of the Philippines, Prospero de Vera, said the whole relief effort had been politically polarised.

''This will be the defining moment of Aquino's administration and he needs to act very strongly and be very focused and rise above political bickering,'' he said.

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