Yolanda victims still pay price for gov’t officials’ blame game

A YEAR after typhoon Yolanda battered parts of central Philippines, the worst-hit victims and the actors in the recovery effort are finding themselves navigating complex political realities that have come to the fore after the storm.

This much is in full view at ground zero: Tacloban, the capital of Leyte and stronghold of the politically influential Romualdez clan, whose kin to the far north are family of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos. While Tacloban is led by Mayor Alfred S. Romualdez, the larger province is governed by Governor Leopoldo Dominico L. Petilla, an ally of President Benigno S. C. Aquino III and brother to the Energy secretary.

Two news items in recent days brought back memories of the blame game that last year betrayed the dynamics between Tacloban and the national government: Mr. Aquino’s conspicuous absence last Saturday from events in Tacloban marking the anniversary of the typhoon, and Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery Panfilo M. Lacson’s unflinching remarks against Tacloban’s mayor yesterday.

In a briefing yesterday, Mr. Lacson singled out Tacloban as being particularly difficult to work with, due to the city government’s “below par” performance. That came following protests against the national government’s post-Yolanda response, which rocked the provincial capital on the disaster’s anniversary.

In all this, the most vulnerable communities in the affected areas are still paying the price.

“Immediately after Yolanda, you’ve seen it — the dynamics between the government and, specifically, Tacloban City, because this is a Marcos area,” Elizabeth Lacson-Paguio, Field Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy Coordinator for international development group Oxfam’s Yolanda response, said in an interview shortly before the anniversary. “How they are able to coordinate things is hampered because of these political dynamics.”

Tacloban locals are quick to attest to that.

“I really don’t know what’s up with [the tensions between the local and national government], but if you generalize the sentiment of all the victims here, that really seems to be one of the reasons [for the slow recovery],” Tacloban native Maria Luz Orbong, 41, shared in Filipino in a recent interview. Ms. Orbong, a Yolanda survivor, is a community volunteer on gender-based violence at a bunkhouse village in Tacloban built for those displaced by the typhoon.

“How fast [recovery] plans are being approved is also affected by how you are politically,” Ms. Paguio said. “You can see for instance, in the case of Tanauan, this is getting the assistance from the national government.”

“But in Tacloban, where there is really a big need of assistance, it’s two-way,” Ms. Paguio said. “[One side is that] the LGU, because he’s a Romualdez, doesn’t want to go to the national government and ask for the money, in the same way that the Tanauan mayor pursues this support.”

And Mr. Lacson, did, in fact, have particular praise for the town of Tanauan in Leyte yesterday, citing the mayor’s eagerness to work with the national government.

In this reporter’s visit to Tanauan a few weeks ago, the town then had the only village of permanent houses in Leyte where formerly displaced locals had already been relocated.

Couple Felisa Abas, 48, and Arneldo Abas, 45, were all praises for their mayor for the permanent houses — constructed with the help of Gawad Kalinga — in a recent interview. They are happy about the new village, they said, and pointed to new livelihood opportunities. Ms. Abas lost four relatives to Yolanda, while Mr. Abas lost nine.

This kind of uneven recovery is now one of the more obvious manifestations of the political game in the province.

Remedios L. Petilla, mayor of the town of Palo and mother to Leyte Governor Petilla and Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho L. Petilla, also acknowledged that the national government’s speed in helping out Tacloban-hit areas has been “not as fast as nongovernment organizations.”

But, unlike Mr. Romualdez’s accusations of bias against the national government, the mayor of Palo attributes the slow pace only to “government procedures, CoA [Commission on Audit] procedures.”

While Ms. Petilla said she would want to see faster “fund releases,” she nevertheless dismissed rumors that Palo could be benefitting from preferential treatment from the national government.

“I think those are comments showing immaturity,” she said. “True, one of my sons is a secretary, and the other son is a governor, but we really worked hard.” The political bickering now even threatens to cast a pall over Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to both Tacloban and Palo in January next year. Ms. Petilla acknowledged that some quarters are alleging her railroading of the relocation of one bunkhouse village’s residents to permanent shelters to tidy up the town for the papal visit.

Ms. Paguio of Oxfam pointed to these often costly political realities as a persistent nuisance — and not just the oft-identified rift between the national government and Tacloban.

“The biggest bottleneck… is on the issue of relocation,” Ms. Paguio said.

No-build zones are areas identified as danger zones up to 40 meters from the coast. “The messaging is really clear. Nobody wants to really touch those areas, the most affected areas, in terms of temporary or emergency shelter assistance,” she said. “That’s why people got stuck in these tents and bunkhouses and makeshifts for a very long time… The humanitarian actors were not able to extend assistance to them.”

Indeed, housing remains one of the most pressing issues in Yolanda-affected areas a year after, and the Aquino administration is now scrambling to address the severe housing backlog for survivors of what is described as the world’s strongest typhoon to have ever made landfall.

To this end, Mr. Aquino signed on Oct. 28 Administrative Order No. 44 that would “streamline the process of issuance of permits, certifications, clearances and licenses for housing and resettlement projects in Yolanda-hit areas.”

The order forms part of efforts to complete the construction of permanent housing units of more than 200,000 affected families.

But how fast this process eventually moves is, for better or worse, inevitably linked to the cooperation between the national and local government, and Yolanda survivors like Ms. Orbong can only hope for the best, with their fates seemingly depending on the whims of the powerful. –Raymund Luther B. Aquino, Reporter, Businessworld