" Across the Pasig River in Malacañang, the turmoil and the chaos continue, days after the smoke of gunfire cleared in Rizal Park. And with three Cabinet members directly in charge of media relations saying contradictory things about what the President knew, when he knew it and what he did and didn’t do during the crisis, you’d think maybe they still need Fred Lim (the old version) over there, too.

First, we hear from Secretaries Edwin Lacierda and Ricky Carandang that the President was only unable to receive the repeated calls of Hong Kong administrator Donald Tsang Yam-kuen because Aquino was in a meeting. Tsang, who was reported by the South China Morning Post to be near tears when he went on television after failing to reach the Philippine president, said the first thing Aquino told him when they finally talked late Monday night was “sorry.”

Aquino told Tsang he could not take any calls because he was busy monitoring the situation and commanding the people on the ground. (And all the while, I thought Lim was the ground commander.)

Carandang told the Post that an aide of Aquino took the call from Tsang’s own aide and that Carandang then called the Department of Foreign Affairs to contact Tsang in Hong Kong. After repeated attempts to call the DFA, Carandang apparently—and inexplicably—gave up.
Aquino himself said during a press briefing after the crisis that he did not want to “micro-manage” the situation and that he had been meeting officials about the dengue fever outbreak and budget preparation matters, among other things. Why he or anyone in his official family never gave a thought to calling Tsang or his people in Hong Kong—even before they themselves tried to reach the President—is unknown.

It actually gets worse. The third media secretary, Herminio Coloma, said yesterday that he found it “unbelievable” that Tsang had called up Aquino and had not been put through. “That is unbelievable because the President is accessible all the time,” Coloma told ABS-CBN.
Of course, no one probably thought to tell Coloma that his boss and his Cabinet colleagues already admitted earlier that Tsang had indeed called. And perhaps Coloma was blissfully unaware that he was implying that he was accusing Tsang of lying about trying to get in touch with the President.

Coloma actually completed a grand slam of sorts by declaring on the same TV program that the botched assault was also the fault of the previous Arroyo administration. “We just inherited the [current] state of the Philippine National Police,’’ he said, to explain his addition of the previous administration to the ever-lengthening list of suspects in the bloody fiasco.

Over in cyberspace, meanwhile, Noynoy Aquino fan pages were being taken down after being flooded with criticism concerning the President’s inaction during the crisis. The President’s own official Facebook page was censored by its administrators in his name, to remove unflattering and “below the belt” comments.

Whatever happened to the vow of transparent governance and the use of “new media” like the Internet for direct and interactive feedback between the Palace and the people? Apparently, that promise got sledgehammered and thrown under the tourist bus at the Luneta, as well.
And this is merely the first “major major” crisis to rock the Aquino administration, something that was precipitated by the drastic action taken by just one man. One wonders how this government would react to a really big crisis—and what the people who have no love for this administration are already planning to test its questionable mettle.

Amateur hour has been extended into a major major week, indeed.” By: Jojo Robles