Typhoon Ruby and the challenge to local governments

President Aquino and Secretary Mar Roxas got it right the first time, although they garbled the message when they said it. Local governments—provincial, city and municipal—are logically and properly the “first responders” in a natural disaster or emergency like Typhoon Ruby and Typhoon Yolanda. They said it in 2013 in high-profile interviews on CNN and BBC, and on the local networks; and they repeated it in countless statements and speeches aimed at dispelling the impression that the President had dropped the ball and could not rise to the occasion.

With Yolanda/Haiyan, the message got mangled by all those dreadful statements that came out of their mouths while they were in Tacloban ostensibly to help in responding to the emergency.