Why didn’t President Aquino and his troika—Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman—simply mobilize the entire force of the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Armed Forces of the Philippines Corps of Engineers to clear the roads in order to reach the farthest Supertyphoon “Yolanda”-hit areas and, at the same time, commandeer the dump trucks of private contractors to bring food to the disaster victims; also all public transport to carry victims who wanted out of those areas?
They would have saved people from misery and spared the Philippines the embarrassment it is reaping from foreign journalists. And Anderson Cooper would have had no reason to ask, “Who’s in charge here?”
—JOSE CASALS, Casiguran, Sorsogon