The latest criticism or source of embarrassment for the Aquino govt is the allegation that relief goods from Germany via Lufthansa The news were circulating at the social media. Customs Commissioner Raffy Biazon texted the Presidential Communications and Strategic Planning Office that he investigated the allegations and found them to be untrue. We cant afford to discourage foreign countries from sending their aid with another form of looting.
One embarrassing moment was the CNN interview of the President; the President appeared pitiful when he showed lack of grasp of the situation The Leyte residents are becoming angry with the very popular President over the slow action on relief operations. Many relief goods are coming in but distribution of the same is slow because of lack of vehicles, fuel, and clogged roads.
Here is the text of the PNOY administration on the response to the tragedy:
During a meeting with officials in Tacloban, the president expressed annoyance at his top disaster management official and grew peevish when a local business
owner complained of being held up at gunpoint by looters. “But you did
not die, right?” Mr. Aquino snapped, according to local news media
reports, shortly before presidential guards ushered the man out of the
room.
On Tuesday, Mr. Aquino played down reports that the death toll
could exceed 10,000, suggesting 2,000 might be more realistic. In an
interview with CNN, he attributed the larger figure to the “emotional
trauma” experienced by those providing the estimates.
Ramon C. Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform
in Manila, said the debate over casualty figures was becoming an
unnecessary distraction. “I don’t believe the lower figures put out by
officials, but if the number turns out to be greater, you’re going to
have a political backlash,” he said.
A columnist for The Manila Times, Ben D. Kritz, ridiculed top officials,
among them the nation’s defense secretary, for flying to the disaster
zone without working phones. He noted that one of the first military
planes to land was carrying a van — which could not be used on Leyte
Island’s debris-clogged roads. “In the aftermath of the typhoon, the
response of the Aquino administration, as usual, has been an
uncoordinated, fumbling embarrassment,” he wrote.
The president’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Until now Mr. Aquino, popularly referred to as Noynoy, had a remarkably
smooth tenure as the leader of nation long derided as “the sick man of
Asia.” The son of former president Corazon C. Aquino and Benigno S.
Aquino Jr., a beloved political figure who was assassinated in 1983, Mr.
Aquino has earned high marks by taking on the endemic corruption that
has long bedeviled the Philippines. Among his most notable achievements
was a landmark peace accord with the nation’s largest group of Muslim
separatists that had evaded his predecessors.
Since his election in 2010, the economy has been expanding at a heady
pace, with 7.6 percent growth during the first half of the year. His
administration has bolstered tax collection and has helped fuel
increased spending on infrastructure, social welfare and disaster
preparation.
But few would deny that Mr. Aquino has been dealt a difficult hand in
recent months. In September, the government was caught off guard after a
splinter group of Muslim insurgents seized a city in the south,
prompting a battle with the army that left more than 200 people dead and
destroyed 10,000 homes. There have also been back-to-back natural
disasters, including an earthquake last month that killed more than 200
people on Bohol, an island that was battered again last week by Typhoon
Haiyan. Last year, Typhoon Bopha killed more than 1,100 people in the
southern island of Mindanao, causing $900 million in damage.
