AMANPOUR: President Aquino, welcome to the program. And thank you for joining me in the midst of this incredible national disaster. I appreciate your time.
BENIGNO SIMEON COJUANGCO AQUINO III, PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT: Yes. Thank you for having us.
AMANPOUR: Can I ask you first, you have toured some of the worst hit areas. On a personal note, how has it affected you, what you've seen, and how do you manage to reassure your people who have gone through this supertyphoon after an earthquake, after a typhoon last year?
AQUINO: Well, I think, first of all, typhoons are not an unusual occurrence for the Philippines. We get visited by about 20 of them every year. But this year has been an exceptionally bad year, more than 20.
We have been able to demonstrate as a government and as a people collectively that we take care of each other. And the government's immediate response, I think, has been reassuring to the vast majority of our people.
Our ability to take care of our problems rather quickly, except in this particular case, the foundation of our efforts rely on the local government units. And unfortunately, two or three were simply overwhelmed by the degree of this typhoon that affected us.
But other than that, in other areas, there was preemptive evacuations, cooperation from the citizenry, which brought down the casualty figures from the other areas affected, except for this corridor in the Leyte and two Samar provinces.
AMANPOUR: It's obviously a huge emergency to get fresh food, water, to the worst hit areas. And we have seen some of the local officials, mayors, for instance, in the Tacloban area, have said that, you know, survivors are piling, are looking up into the heavens; the dead are piling up.
He says there's no local government functioning, those that they depend on, the police, the army, even the social workers of the government, all are victims themselves, even the police, the army, many of them are dead.
We've heard so many stories from our reporters about the slowness, the bottleneck of trying to get vital aid to the people.
How can you open those routes and that pipeline for disaster relief?
AQUINO: Again, our system says that the local government unit has to take care for the initial response. Unfortunately, for instance, in the case of Tacloban, our policemen there assigned are about 290, and only 20 of them were available when the -- when the disaster struck.
Employees of the city government have been -- have been also affected, have been tending to their own families and there have been very few who have been reporting for work.
Hence, the national government had to not just augment what the local government could do, but actually replace a lot of the personnel with personnel from other regions to take care of government vital functions.
What hampers the effort is that the typhoon wrought havoc on the power lines and also the communications facilities, giving us immense difficulty in identifying needs and thereby dispatching the necessary relief supplies and vital equipment.
So today we are -- and all of the national roads, understandable, have already been reopened. We're already working on the secondary roads. And most of the airports are about almost back to normal operating levels.
But still, the sheer number of people that were affected in these three provinces is quite daunting. We are -- we are tasked to provide something like 50,000 family food packs every two days.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, we've heard catastrophic death toll estimates. Some have said maybe 10,000 in the worst-hit areas in Tacloban alone. Your initial government estimates are about a couple of thousand dead.
Do you expect the death toll to go much higher?
What can you tell us about the number of dead?
AQUINO: Ten thousand I think is too much. And perhaps that was also brought about by -- how shall I put it -- being in the center of the destruction, being actually -- there was emotional trauma involved with that particular estimate, quoting both a police official and a local government official. They were too close to incident. They did not have basis for it.
Two thousand, the figure right now, I have is about 2,000. But this might still get higher. We're hoping to be able to contact something like 29 municipalities left, wherein we still have to establish their numbers, especially for the missing. But so far, 2,000, about 2,500 is the figure we're working on as far as deaths are concerned.
AMANPOUR: Are you getting enough aid internationally? Obviously the United States is sending an aircraft carrier; it's already deployed U.S. Marines there. You have a very close history, of course, with the United States.
Are you getting enough aid from your international allies and neighbors?
AQUINO: There are, at last count, I saw almost 22 countries have either pledged or have actually given us aid, and we are very thankful for this.
Amongst the first countries to respond was Germany, Japan, Indonesia, even countries who are -- we've had not extensive ties, like Hungary. So we are very appreciative of this, Canada, New Zealand were amongst the first also.
And as you said, an American carrier battle group, I understand, is coming over. There are desalination facilities and helicopters, as far as supply ships, that will greatly enhance our efforts to bring the necessary materials back to the areas most hard-hit.
AMANPOUR: And what about the -- you know, obviously people are desperate and they're raiding some stores. You can understand that. There are obviously also reports of some looting and outbreaks of some violence.
What is, in your assessment, the state of law and order?
AQUINO: Well, we have deployed an additional 2,000 personnel to these affected areas, to restore order. And, again, the problem is when the main government unit, which is the local government unit, who are acting as first responders, fail to respond appropriately, then there was that breakdown.
People were -- became desperate and that's why we are trying to fast- track the situation where national government takes over these local government functions so that order is restored and people are -- gain the confidence that their needs are being addressed and will be addressed fully.
AMANPOUR: It just so happens that there is one of those major climate change conferences taking place in Europe right now, in Warsaw, Copenhagen 19. And your Philippine climate negotiator made a really heartfelt plea for international help and basically lambasted the failure of the world to deal with climate change.
He said that he's done a lot of interviews; he talked to a lot of officials in the U.S. and the developed world, and they say they can't be held responsible, that they can't be morally obliged to do anything.
Now the Philippines is the most storm-wracked area in the world; we know that it's the third most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
What do you say to those negotiators who are sitting there in world capitals while your country is practically submerged?
AQUINO: Well, I think it's already an accepted reality for the Filipino community that global climate change is a reality and there should be no debate that it is happening. Areas are -- times when it should be raining suddenly become dry. The dry months suddenly become very, very wet.
For instance, since I've assumed office, practically every year, when we are supposed to be in the Christmas period already, where we never had typhoons, we have very, very strong and devastating typhoons like what happened last year.
We're, again, at the tail end. There -- our wet season is supposed to have been over and we have the supertyphoon. It wreaks havoc also on our planting season, wherein our farmers are getting hard-pressed to adjust to this global climate change.
And we all live on one planet. Either we come up with a solution that everybody adheres to and cooperates with, or let us be prepared to meet disasters, ever-increasing disasters on a global level.
In one of the international conferences that I attended, there was a South Pacific island that is already discussing moving their entire population because they -- what was -- I have -- I'm sorry; I don't remember exactly how much the level of water will increase, but it will completely inundate their country.
And they are actually now discussing where to move their people, if that eventuality happens.
So to the -- especially the most developed countries that are contributing immensely to the global warming, there has to be a sense of moral responsibility that what they wreak is playing havoc on the lives of so many others who are less capable of fending for themselves.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, you talk about a moral responsibility from the world.
Let me ask you about your responsibility as president. Clearly, I don't know whether you agree, but the way you respond and your government responds to this terrible devastation will probably define your presidency.
Many have talked about how much effort has gone in, how much reform you have done, how much work you've done against corruption.
But many people might end up judging you on how your government has responded.
What do you say to that?
AQUINO: I think you would ask all of the governors, for instance, of the areas that are -- have been saying that our making them aware of the dangers that were forthcoming from this typhoon enabled them to move their populations from danger areas into safer areas and thereby minimize casualties.
A lot of them, with exception of Leyte province, eastern and western Samar, have reported that practically one or two casualties or even zero casualties where in normally, when we have a typhoon, you will also have ships that were traveling that would have sunk, casualties in the hundreds, probably that merit too much attention.
So the knowledge, the geohazard mapping, the knowledge imparted to all of them has enabled them to really reduce the risk inherent with all of these disasters (INAUDIBLE).
AMANPOUR: When you look to the future and you know what kind of place your archipelago occupies, it is just storm buffeted over and over again.
Do you think this is going to get worse in the future? Do you envision worse storms, worse casualties? Or do you see that there might be a possibility of raising the game and raising the ability to react to this kind of thing?
AQUINO: Well, one would hope that it will not be worse than this. But at the same time, again, we're trying to plan our communities whereby they are more resilient to all of these ravages of nature. There is an ongoing program precisely to define all of these geohazard maps. There is some sort of an ecological reengaging whereby items, like planting mangroves, for instance, as defense against tsunamis.
Investments in the sciences, particularly our weather bureau, the Institute for Volcanology and other entities in government whereby they will provide us with the necessary knowledge so that we can minimize to the furthest extent the risks inherent in all of these natural disasters that, unfortunately, the Philippines finds itself in, not just for typhoons, but also being part of the Ring of Fire.
AMANPOUR: Mr. President, finally, what is your most urgent and desperate need to deal with this disaster right now?
AQUINO: Well, right now I think the challenge for us after we -- after relief efforts will be to rebuild the houses of tens of thousands of families affected, quite a major outlay, and then construction has to be better to withstand the ravages of this climate change.
And also later in the mapping out of areas prone to storm surges, there still -- that, I think, is the next phase of the studies that we have to do to make our country more resilient to all of these natural disasters.
AMANPOUR: We wish you the best and we wish all the people in the Philippines the best at this terribly difficult time. Mr. President, thank you for joining me from Manila.
