Anarchy

This term is derived from the Greek root which means “without a leader”. The word characterizes what happened in the wake of the visit of Yolanda.

The President and his government as well as die hard supporters were terribly annoyed at the accusation from local and international media that the government was missing in the places devastated by the fury of the typhoon.

The government misunderstood the description by the media and got stung by the accusations that they were overwhelmed by the extent and the magnitude of the wreckage and the horror of the first hours after Yolanda lifted.

Nobody can blame anyone for the destruction but we can blame the lack of action or the anarchy in the aftermath. The man-made demolition was avoidable. It could have been avoided had the government a contingency plans for the worst post-typhoon scenario.

We can understand that the government of Leyte and Samar could not respond promptly because they too were victims. They had to care for (some had to look for) their families. Others perished. Their sense of priority is focused on their family.

But Manila and Mindanao were not so devastated and other local governments, as in Negros, were functional.

Metro Manila was not paralyzed. So, why were the resources – human particularly, not mobilized and moved to Leyte and Samar and Capiz and other worst-hit provinces?

When Manila acted, it only exposed its incompetency. It is good television footage for the President to be disturbing bottled water, but for heaven’s sake! He was not campaigning. He should be issuing orders rather than distributing goods that can be handled by a clerk or a janitor.

The ineffable Billy Gomez captured the situation in an analogy. The President should have sent a sugarcane planter there. When a storm strike, the planter,  by character would have immediately gone to the hacienda, called the encargados and the cabos and issued orders where canals had to be dug immediately to drain the field, how many laksas of new cane points to cut back to replace the damaged ones, etc,. In a sense, he commands who would be doing what immediately.

A good planter, Billty says, is never caught unprepared knowing that each year he faces the same challenges – typhoons, and floods, even drought.

It was not the President’s job to distribute water. His job is to assess the situation from a higher and wider perspective, then issue orders. Yes, he should be issuing orders not implementing them. That is what generals, field marshals, and president should be doing.

President Aquino was supposed to harness every resource at his command and that is the entire government, to move and attend to the immediate needs of the people – food and medical care. His action was to be automatic, triggered by the immediacy and enormity of the situation.

The President is not called the commander-in-chief for nothing; he was to command and get things done. He is president because he must lead most especially during times of crisis. In moments of confusion and disorder he stands as the figure of stability and confidence.

Leadership is often defined as stability under pressure.

Whoever advised him to distribute water and waste time must have a brain of a – well, you can coin your own word – but cannot be considered competent.

Thus there was anarchy because there was no leader, no commander and no figure of authority.

The looting, the raping, the formation of armed gangs, the debris that clogged the roadways, the unburied dead, the hunger and the fears are not simply because of the typhoon but most of all the results of anarchy. It was a situation where authority disappeared and law disregarded. People were left to fend for themselves.

The immediate victims are physically impossible to help quickly, but the day after and days after, the suffering and the misery could have been averted with leadership.

This is wisdom at hindsight, but the entire Armed Forces of the Philippines could have been placed on red alert two days before Yolanda struck and when it did the AFP could jumped off to where the worst case situation was.

But sadly, where was the Army to secure the disaster area and prevent criminality? Where was the Navy to ferry goods and personnel and the Air Force to drop or parachute food and supplies?

We have AFP units that could have been in Tacloban within five hours. But we have not heard from the most prepared group in the country – the AFP. Why? Because there was no commander-in-chief and the other chiefs waited for orders.*

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