Thursday, December 14, 2006 Wenceslao: Instant weather experts By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
ANYBODY can be a genius on hindsight, more so critics. That is why I find some of the talk about the postponement of the Asian summit laughable. Suddenly, critics have become experts on the weather when it was obvious that before Seniang hit the country they were as clueless as Pag-asa on the kind of damage the typhoon would bring to Cebu.
I don't think my eyes and ears played some tricks on me. But the day Pag-asa tracked Seniang, almost everybody warned of the possibility that the weather disturbance would affect our hosting of the summit. More so when weather bulletins said Seniang could hit land on the Sunday---Dec. 10---when the international gathering was to open.
I didn't hear the critics-turned-weather-experts comment that the summit should proceed because the typhoon won't devastate Cebu. While Pag-asa said Seniang was weaker than Milenyo and Reming, it also said the typhoon would hit northern Cebu as it moves towards Western Visayas. Nobody was sure flights at the Mactan airport wouldn’t be cancelled.
Those who felt that Seniang wouldn't devastate Cebu kept the feeling to themselves. Why? Because they were not sure whether what they felt was what would actually happen. That is why when the National Organizing Committee announced the decision to postpone the summit, I didn't hear anybody protest: "But Seniang is nothing!"
Even Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who criticized the postponement as a sign that our government is weak, obviously wasn’t sure Seniang was a patsy. The Cebu City Government scraped the bottom of its calamity funds to prepare for the typhoon. That only means that it braced for the worst, like what the summit organizers did.
It’s not that I am totally swallowing the line that the National Organizing Committee used in defending the summit’s postponement. My view is that the political storm sparked by the shamefaced manner the administration pursued Charter change was what tilted the balance in favor of the postponement. The terrorist threat was secondary.
But I would be lying if I say I never thought Seniang wouldn’t have affected the holding of the summit and use that to criticize the postponement. The truth is, like Cebu City Hall, I braced for the worst. On Saturday, I made sure I went home early considering that Pag-asa predicted Seniang to hit Cebu that night. I bought a flashlight, just in case.
What I feared was the wind, so I checked the possible weak spots in our house. Thank God the wind that came was not what I expected, although the rain did fall for a day or two. But we know things could have been worse, typhoons being unpredictable. Thus to claim certainty in the manner Seniang howled through the province is to lie.
I was an organizer for almost a decade and have set up many meetings, thus I shared the anxiety of the summit organizers when Seniang was tracked. When problems like the weather crop up, you have to make quick decisions, balancing the importance of a gathering with the need to ensure the safety of those who will attend. In the case of the summit, though, the political storm in Manila was apparently also factored in.
