by: Atty. Elpidio “Ping” Peria

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The Wrath of Ondoy, the G20 and Making Informed Decisions For the 2010 Elections

     The heavy rains of typhoon Ondoy which poured down Metro Manila and key provinces of Luzon last Saturday 25 September 2009 should be our “Katrina” moment.  Katrina was a hurricane which hit the US in 2005 and was the costliest as well as one of the five deadliest, of all the hurricanes which hit the US. It is famous also for showing how incompetent the Bush Administration was in handling these kinds of situations.
     I, for one, got stuck in EDSA Monumento that day, from 3pm to 9pm, as our vehicle which came from Guiguinto, Bulacan, just parked itself in one of the empty parking spaces in front of a car dealership, to save on gas and to await when traffic will move. While there,  we just watched the buses and other vehicles literally move inch-by-inch, and people who worked in the malls of SM North Edsa and Trinoma were walking back to the direction of Caloocan City and Monumento proper and Malabon and nearby residential areas.
     Inside our vehicle, we listened to the frantic calls of people on rooftops in Provident Village, Marikina, Cainta, Pasig, Quezon City, even Makati City, asking to be rescued. That was around 3pm.
When it was way past 8pm, the same people who texted the radio stations, were still up on their roofs. In the background of their frantic calls were voices of people and children crying, for food, for help, for fear of being drowned, the waters they say, were still rising. The meeting of NDCC officials presided by no less than GMA just adjourned, and when NDCC Chair and DND Secretary Gibo Lorenzo was asked if he can already say with certainty if help is on the way and if he can please point out to what areas are the rescue teams going. He just said, the general areas where the rescue teams are going- like mantra, he said these teams are going to Marikina, Cainta, Pasig, the priority areas.
     You have to admire the fellow for his coolness under fire, but he doesn’t seem to get it. And this also goes to the other local officials who went over the radio, just to say that something is happening in their localities and people are being rescued. All of them issued orders that were either too general, or too vague, that all it gave off was a semblance of action. And yet we have to ask – how did we get to be where we are, our elected officials?
     But, the sense of outrage of the people is not there – the people who  worked at the malls going back to their homes in Caloocan and Malabon  were happy to be going home, as they can rest their tired legs and feet and they can eat. But never was there evident in their faces that they are angry with all the officialdom of the land, for if the  law on solid waste management was properly  implemented, the rivers would not have been so clogged, or if the laws on logging had been implemented, there would still be trees  that will hold the rain waters that fell on the mountains, or if there were laws on urban planning (do we have one?), we wouldn’t have haphazard development in the metropolis, where poor people live near esteros or creeks and they are literally facing death in instances when the rivers swell during heavy rains. And this goes on and on and on.
     Look at the other developing countries along the league of the Philippines in the 60s- India, China, Argentina, Brazil, and gasp!- Indonesia – just recently in Pittsburgh, USA,  they were recognized as part of the G20 – a group of countries whose economic clout is such that they have now replaced the G8,  a rich-countries club coming mainly from the West, except Japan.
     The G20, newsreports say,  is the new kid on the block, a global group that will now discuss how to reshape the world economy, especially as it still tries to recover from the financial crisis which blew up starting in the US last year.
     And where are we now, the Philippines, supposedly second only to Japan, in the 60s? Latest statistics on ASEAN indicate that Vietnam is about to overtake us, economics-wise, like GDP, terms of trade, etc.; we are more along the category of Cambodia, or Bangladesh, and the latter is getting better, at least they have a strong local pharmaceutical industry.
     Where are our leaders? But where are the people who will demand for these leaders, and hold them accountable for their failures?  Again, the JP Desk will do another round of electoral education in the Diocese. Don’t we ever learn?