THERE is a pressing need for the authorities to convene a commission of inquiry, to look at how the devastation caused by recent typhoons were handled by the government. This is not an issue that will go away. In the National Capital Region, the flooding may take weeks to subside; the reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts will take months. There is the possibility that further typhoons might reverse some of the work done.

If in recent weeks the nation has been united in remembrance, it is now united in grief and ? we do not think it?s an exaggeration to say ? anger. All of officialdom, on whichever side of the aisle, in whatever office, is in the dock. As the public demands accountability, we won?t be surprised if officials react by finger-pointing, dodging the issues, or fudging the facts. The public needs to know who did their duty, did it well, or did it badly; and what can be done, institutionally and operationally, to improve disaster response and rehabilitation efforts.

As it is, not just our present officials but a long line of government people stretching back decades are in the dock, too; together with those who?ve benefited, in the public sector, from whimsical or lackadaisical, inconsistent or downright unfair and negligent planning and zoning regulations and from the continuing destruction of forests and watershed areas. Coddled constituencies and those that rely on them for votes or funding are now bearing the brunt of a political system that makes consensus and rational planning virtually impossible.

From the urban poor (kept poor so they can serve as captive voters for local politicians) to those who mobilize the poor even when government seeks to relocate them simply on the principle that government can never do anything good, to the developers of middle- and upper-class subdivisions, to the officials who permit development without regard to environmental planning, to the businesses that blithely build over esteros and other natural draining mechanisms ? these constituencies will all attempt to maneuver to avoid changing their status quo.

Our communities as a whole will continue paying the price ?though we detect a willingness, born out of trauma, on the part of the public to start making tough choices and require the enforcement of strict regulations, so long as government shows political will. But it cannot be the kind of political will simply exercised to simulate governance; it has to be the kind that makes tough decisions based on real facts, without regard to personal, political or financial gain on the part of our leaders.

So it must begin with a concerted effort to study the causes of so much human misery and destruction, including a timeline of events and the cataloguing of the factors that got in the way of an efficient yet compassionate preparation for, and response to, the disasters that have struck.

Whether it comes from past studies, city and zoning plans that took into account natural phenomena such as where water flows and tends to accumulate; or that provided for adequate drainage; or that regulated population densities; or that took note of the reality (known for decades now) of sinking land levels due to the draining of underground water reservoirs as a result of the unregulated use of domestic and industrial water pumps; or that tolerated informal settler communities along riverbanks, the facts must be surveyed and reported.

And whether by commission or omission, the squandering of government funds due to corruption, the misuse of funds for political purposes, the hiring of incompetent officials and the firing of honest or capable ones, jealousy among government departments or the refusal of local fiefdoms to even consider reorganizing themselves, particularly in a sprawling metropolis, must be identified, documented, reported and tallied, too.

We hope government will rise to the occasion and create an independent commission. But if one?s headed for a whitewash, then the public must be prepared to convene one in the private sector. We got a glimpse of the apocalypse, and it has put the fear of God in the population.