Say it again, please, Mr. President. Did we hear you right?

You won’t visit disaster areas until rehabilitation work is completed?

In Malacañang, President Aquino told reporters he planned to visit the provinces affected by Typhoons Pedring and Quiel, but his Cabinet must first finish a rehabilitation plan for those provinces.

“This morning and this afternoon, the Cabinet will meet to discuss the rehabilitation plan,” Mr. Aquino said. “When do we return to normal the roads that were destroyed? When can the landslides be cleared and the electricity brought back 100 percent?”

Hmmm.

We can only hope he was not misquoted by a broadsheet.

If not, his remarks smack not only of gross insensitivity and betray an un-Christian side of his personality, totally the opposite of that of his dearly loved and sorely missed mother, President Cory Aquino.

As the duly elected leader of this nation with an overwhelming mandate, the statement falls short of the dignity of his lofty office.

All Presidents love to be portrayed by history as a caring and compassionate ruler.

Thus, they roll up their sleeves, dirty their hands, brave the rains, and wade in muddy waters to give aid and comfort to those afflicted by nature’s wrath.    

Apparently, not this one, not today.

That is not all. The difficulty of picking up the broken pieces, limbs, and lives as well as rising from the wreckage has also been made more difficult by the fact that P-Noy had vetoed the use of calamity funds for disaster training and to prepare relocation sites, a lawmaker said Monday.

Thus, relief agencies were ill-equipped to deal with the back-to-back typhoons last week.

“We now feel the impact of the President’s veto power that resulted in the slow response in carrying out rescue and relief operations,” Kabataan Rep. Raymond Palatino said. “There was little or no preparation at all.”

The President admitted that the government’s response to disasters was not enough and must be improved.

But he insisted on first “discussing” road clearing and repair, fuel supply and the resumption of power supply in the affected areas, and the damage to agriculture with the members of his Cabinet.

Opposition lawmakers whose districts were among the hardest hit by Pedring and Quiel were so naturally outraged on being informed that they may not be able to help rehabilitate those districts because their pork barrel had yet to be released by Malacañang.

House Deputy Minority Leader and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, Ang Galing Party-list Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo, and Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay took turns in calling on the Aquino administration to have a heart and finally release their pork barrel.

“The pork is just piglets,” Suarez was quoted by the broadsheet as saying. “I still don’t see it. I’ve been getting money from my own pocket to provide assistance to my constituents.”

For this year, Palatino noted,  P-Noy had P5 billion allocated for calamities and P14.2 billion for risk-disaster preparedness, funds that only the President controlled.

The P19.2 billion for this year alone had already surpassed the P18.6 billion in accumulated allocations during former president Arroyo’s nine years in office, the partylist solon said.