Palace admits being too busy with 'Arroyo landmines' to heed flood warning

Clearing the so-called Arroyo landmines had made the Aquino administration too busy to act on last year's warning on the looming climactic catastrophe in the country, a Malacañang official admitted Tuesday.   “It (warning) was early on in the administration, and as you know we were really trying to do a lot of efforts at that time, we were doing a lot of clearing of the landmines,” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said at a press briefing.   The warning came from the Climate Change Congress of the Philippines several weeks after President Benigno Aquino III took over the presidency in 2010. The group claimed it repeated the warning to several Cabinet officials, but it remained unheeded.   Lacierda did not elaborate, but Aquino, since taking over the government, has made it clear that he wants several appointees of his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, out of his administration, among them Merceditas Gutierrez, the former Ombudsman who quit her post after she was impeached by the House of Representatives, and Chief Justice Renato Corona, who will face an impeachment trial middle of January next year.   The Philippines — specifically several areas in Northern Mindanao and the Visayas — is reeling from the devastation caused by tropical storm Sendong, which claimed the lives of over 1,400 individuals and caused millions of pesos worth in damage, making it the deadliest cyclone in 12 years..   Latest reports from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) placed the number of storm-affected families at 113,336 (or 719,485 people), most from the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.   Lesson learned   At Tuesday’s briefing, Lacierda said the Sendong tragedy “has made it emphatic for us to look into… as well as for the local government units… to seriously look into the hazard areas in their respective units.”   “It’s something that we, the national government and the local governments of the respective local governments should work at,” he added. - KBK, GMA News