Need volunteers? Bring back the ROTC!

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, on which my generation would always ask, “Where were you or what were you doing when Pres. Jack Kennedy was assassinated?” My generation grew up with US Peace Corps volunteers going around the Philippines with the voice of President Kennedy during his inaugural address still ringing, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” It is by this principle that many Filipinos swear to live by. Unfortunately it has not been passed on from generation to generation.

There are great many things that we did in our generation that if only we continued on today, they would have been a great help to our beleaguered nation, especially in these times of crisis. I’m referring to the return of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) from where many Filipino guerillas came from to fight the Japanese during World War II. Sadly, the ROTC is no longer compulsory when they could have provided the warm bodies when our nation needed volunteers to help in this crisis.

One of the flimsy excuses for scrapping the ROTC was that officers shouted at their soldiers, which gave them emotional scars. I remember Sir Max Soliven asking me, “Bobit were you emotional scarred?” Of course none of us were emotionally scarred, but this nation lost a lot when it scrapped the ROTC because while in our time the ROTC was focused only in military training, we can always devote 50% of that training to disaster training on relief, rescue and even finding dead bodies trapped in the rubble.  

I know that it is quite tempting to jump to conclusions and go into the lessons that we could learn from the devastating effects of Super Typhoon Yolanda without first coming up with a thoroughly studied and researched reasons on the national government’s pre-typhoon preparedness and their snail’s paced reaction after the typhoon left devastation in its path. Such well-made, no-holds-barred, unbiased research is necessary for our country to heal itself from the brokenness that literally separated the suffering Filipino people from our public servants. We can also use it to reform our nation!

But until now, President Aquino still doesn’t get it. He flew back to Tacloban City so he could be seen giving out relief goods to the people lining up in the heat. Again…this was clearly Malacanang’s “damage control” reaction to the negative reports coming from international press that the Palace Rasputins couldn’t control. Yet as of this writing, P-Noy has not even visited any of the typhoon ravaged towns of Northern Cebu.

For most people suffering in the typhoon ravaged areas, they believe that P-Noy only cares about his image, which Super Typhoon Yolanda exposed and made a mockery of. People here agreed with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that his Presidency has been defined by this typhoon. But all is not lost Mr. President… if only he stopped listening to his Palace Rasputins. As President, he can still do a lot, like unclogging the 10-kilometer long trail of huge trucks bringing relief goods to cross the San Bernardino Strait in Matnog, Sorsogon waiting to cross into Allen, Samar. All that’s needed there are more roll-on, roll-off ferry boats, many of them can be found at the Batangas Port and if the President orders them to go to Matnog… it would certainly unclog that chokepoint.

As I pointed out, I was in Bantayan Island last Sunday and I didn’t care to visit the town hall of Bantayan because I gave all our relief goods to the people who needed them. But my wife Jessica did drop off some hygiene boxes to the town hall because she knew that they had none. The Mayor was there, but I didn’t call on him. However last Monday evening, his assistant, Vince Escario rang me up and passed on the phone to Mayor Cris Escario.

The Bantayan Mayor bewailed a news report (not The Freeman) that the Province of Cebu gave Bantayan Island P2 million for relief funds. Apparently that news report was erroneous as Bantayan still has not received that money. I learned that this fund was indeed given to the town of Bantayan but deposited only last Tuesday morning.

The fact that it took all 11 days for the Province of Cebu to give that monetary assistance to these devastated towns is testament to the incompetence of Cebu Governor Hilario “JunJun” Davide III. I can only second-guess that this fund wasn’t given right away because the Escarios do not belong to the Liberal Party (LP). Shame on these politicians. When disaster strikes, political affiliations should be set aside for more important things.

We can only thank the private sector for helping on their own. Cebu’s top conglomerate, the Aboitiz Group through the Aboitiz Foundation, even raised P161 Million for Yolanda relief just in a week. What about national government funding? For northern Cebu we still have no idea if P-Noy would even match what the Aboitiz Foundation collected for Cebu.

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