The further away from Manila one goes, the more susceptible the system is to breaking down. But even when the breakdown victimizes people already suffering from the lingering effects of a major calamity, there is no guarantee that the wrongs will be made right in the faraway capital – assuming they are considered at all.

In the areas in Mindanao still reeling from the after-effects of last year's typhoon Pablo, some of the 6.2 million typhoon victims continue to complain about how the national government has been negligent in its efforts to help communities that have been heretofore peaceful, productive and self-reliant. Worse, the allegations of negligence have been accompanied by charges of large-scale overpricing and seeming corruption by the Department of Social Welfare and Development – the primary agency in the government's relief drive.

More than a month after around 5,000 typhoon victims barricaded the Montevista Highway in Compostela Valley province to protest government's lack of concern for their continued suffering, the relief and rehabilitation efforts are still plagued with controversy. Since last week, the victims of the typhoon have been accusing DSWD of overpricing the bunkhouses that it has been building to replace the wrecked homes of the residents of Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental.

A local group calling itself Barug Katawhan (“Stand up, people”) has charged DSWD of spending P550,000 for each bunkhouse which serves as a temporary shelter for the victims. Meanwhile, an aid agency also involved in the effort – the International Organization of Migration – spends only P259,653 for similar structures. 

In addition, allegations surrounding the “underpayment” of local laborers contracted in a cash-for-work scheme to build the bunkhouses have also been made public by Barug Katawhan. The workers allegedly received only P20,000 in lump sum fees for their work, but the DSWD supposedly pegs the cost of labor per bunkhouse at P50,000.

Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman has denied the allegations against her agency, citing supposed differences between IOM's bunkhouses and those built by the government. But no serious effort to look into the allegations of corruption in the typhoon-ravaged provinces has been declared by the national government.

“The DSWD has already proven itself to be corrupt and inept in implementing the relief and rehabilitation operations,” the local group said. The corruption and ineptitude of the agency is giving the victims every reason “to rise up” against the government, said Barug Katawhan.

The Aquino administration has often been accused of its failure to quickly respond to crisis situations, whether natural or man-made. Now, in the large (if faraway) communities that were destroyed by Pablo, it is proving to be incapable of implementing credible and corruption-free rehabilitation programs, as well.

* * *

The diplomatic lightweights and political dimwits in the Manila government all talked about forging a new regime of peace in Mindanao. What they got, for their pains, was a potentially explosive situation involving a long-standing claim to Sabah and strained ties with yet another neighboring country.

In what seemed like ages ago, the Aquino administration sealed a deal in Tokyo with the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front for President Noynoy's version of greatly expanded autonomy for (and abject appeasement to) Muslim Mindanao. No one, it seems, thought about what Aquino called the “dormant” claim of the Philippine government to Sabah, which has been kept alive by the heirs of the old Sultanate of Sulu.

Now, the failure of the Manila government to factor the Sabah claim into the negotiations with the MILF has blown up in Aquino's face. Thus, when a small force of armed men in the employ of the Sultan's family crossed over from Tawi-tawi in the Philippines to a town in Sabah in Malaysia (which, ironically, acted as a broker in the Aquino-MILF talks), Aquino and his entire administration were caught, well, noynoying once again.

Up to today, a week since the Sultan's men landed in Sabah, the Manila government still hasn't come up with a response, coherent or not, to what has gotten Malaysian authorities panicking. While Kuala Lumpur has decided to deploy its security forces to isolate the Sultan's armed men, Aquino has failed to even make a categorical statement on the matter – so badly was its lack of preparation for the plan of the Sultanate to re-occupy its old territory.

(Right up to last week, the Sultan's heirs had been complaining to Malaysian authorities that the Manila-MILF deal would carve up its territories in Sulu and other Philippine areas that former part of the pact. Why the sultanate was protesting to Kuala Lumpur about losing lands in the Philippines shows the extent of its confidence that Manila will heed its complaints.) 

Now, no one in the Aquino administration – which only weeks ago was so confident that its had brought lasting peace to the blood-stained Moro lands after the President visited the Maguindanao main camp of the MILF – seems to know how to deal with a problem that Manila never anticipated. And Aquino can't seem to decide whether to back the Sultanate (thereby angering Malaysia) or renouncing all previous claims, dormant or otherwise, to Sabah (thus incurring the ire of the Sultan's heirs and endangering its peace pact with the MILF).

Dormant, you say? Well, most volcanoes are dormant, too – until they erupt.*