Disasters in the scale of Super typhoon Yolanda make or unmake a leader. The natural calamity wrecked havoc in Tacloban and other provinces in Eastern Visayas and Palawan, flattening the areas, killing maybe thousands (more than 1,700 in Tacloban, Leyte according to the latest count). No one was spared, especially in Tacloban.
Six or seven days after the tragedy, the survivors were still fending for themselves, looking for their loved ones, sleeping with their dead kin while foraging for food and water and sleeping in the streets of the devastated city. This was what CNN Anderson Cooper saw and reported: no one provided help, no one taking charge. Where is the leadership?
President Aquino went to Tacloban which suffered the most damage in terms of destruction and death. Was it the second day? He walked out of a meeting of local officials, saw the damage and went back to Manila? And then making stupid comments before international media? And then just like that? Days before the tragedy struck he was making statements that the country was ready for the onslaught of the strongest typhoon in recorded history? That his disaster management and rescue team was aiming for zero casualty?
President Aquino's behavior in this Philippine Apocalypse was not that of a president of a country.He was unmade, exposed as incompetent and weak-minded. He was no longer a leader. Yolanda blew him away.
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