The politics of disaster

“NO POLITICS here. We should be one in helping our distressed neighbors.”
So stressed Office of External Affairs Sec. Ed Pamintuan at the opening of the fund-raising telethon for the Typhoon Ondoy victims last Sunday. The announced candidate for Angeles City mayor next year taking care in trying to rid of any political hue an enterprise for charity. All too careful for EdPam there, what with the Jaycees’ Avelaine Nepomuceno, niece of re-electionist Mayor Blueboy Nepomuceno, by his side.
Only the proverbial marines, EdPam could have convinced there. Notwithstanding the sincerity of his intent. For disasters hereabouts have become the realm of politics too, awarding victory to him who coordinates, manages, and spins around them well, and spelling calamity to him who will not. And we mean here something much deeper than the all-too-obvious politics of the relief bag bearing the name of just about any one in politics, has-beens and wannabes included.
EdPam should be the first to know of the political disaster the Mount Pinatubo eruptions caused Mayor Antonio Abad Santos.
Nowhere to be seen when heaven rained fire and brimstone on Angeles City, rumors quickly spread of Abad Santos having fled the city to save himself, leaving the suffering city folk to fend for themselves. The poor Mayor Bubusuk never recovered from there, losing miserably to Pamintuan in 1992.
At the winning end, there was Lito Lapid making good use of his movie stunts in Pinatubo disaster scenes – literally immersing himself in lahar, riding helicopters and jumping onto rooftops to rescue stranded residents – to capture the Pampanga governorship not once, not twice, but thrice, each time by a landslide of votes.
The late Porac Mayor Roy David earned the moniker “Lahar Fighter” for his initiatives to make the expanse of Mancatian passable even at the height of the lahar rampages – through his truck-mounted metal contraption euphemized as the “London Bridge” (as in the song, “falling down, falling down”), the lined-up, sandbag-filled container vans serving as bridges, the sugarcane trucks providing piggy-back rides to smaller vehicles – and was undefeated mayor for three full terms.
It was the lahar rampages too that catapulted Junior Canlas to the mayorship of Bacolor. The rarely seen sickly Mayor Gem Balingit made a contrast to the energetic, then vice mayor Junior – in his signature muddied shorts and slippers – always on the scene of every lahar flow.
No politics, in this disaster caused by Typhoon Ondoy, eh, EdPam?
Why, not a few observers, this bloke not excluded, are seeing the confluence of the divine and the political in this latest calamity that hit the country.
Heavenly signs, the all too superstitiously religious – or is religiously superstitious more apt? – even claim, foreboding the divine choice for Philippine president come 2010.
Why, it’s Gilbert Cojuangco Teodoro, who else?
So where’s Noynoy Aquino, all these two days of le deluge? In the person of his sister Kris manning ABS-CBN’s own telethon? May as well have the wife of James Yap run for president herself than play surrogate to her brother.
So where’s Manny Villar? Ah, doing the usual disaster route of relief distribution.
It was only Teodoro that was there, everywhere, on top of the situation, whether presiding over the crisis meeting of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, fielding questions from the international press, checking on actual rescue operations, or moving around the disaster areas.
More than a coming out party, Typhoon Ondoy is a baptism of fire for Gibo. And acquit himself well as a crisis manager, he did with flying colors. Yeah, Gibo fits best the man-profile for president that this country in-crisis needs.
All it takes is one more disaster to visit this nation, and Gibo shall bury under its debris all the presidential pretenders.