At least for once the victims are benefiting from all the political rivalry for reconition. This article from the bbc sums it up nicely. Public opinion has pulled the politicians along behind them and I know that seems harsh but who cares as long as the aid gets to the people that need it.

And jm459 this could explain the reasons why it is while charity should start at home for the politicians it doesnt.

bbc news source

Big pledges yield benefits for donors

By John Simpson
BBC world affairs editor


It has taken George W Bush some days to realise what ordinary people want their leaders to do at times of great international suffering. To be fair, he's by no means the only one.

Many people have lost everything in the disaster.
Tony Blair and leaders from countries as far apart as Japan and Scandinavia, mostly off duty for the holidays, have also been accused of slowness and stinginess.

Now President Bush is starting to move, pledging $350m in total aid, sending 1,500 US marines to Sri Lanka, and a dozen naval vessels and 40 helicopters to the region; and of course his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush.

UN snub

Up to now there has been a certain amount of political jostling between Mr Bush and the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, over who should take the lead in dealing with the disaster.
Mr Bush and his strongest supporters detest Kofi Annan for denouncing last year's invasion of Iraq as illegal.
It looked very much as though Mr Bush's initial proposal of an ad-hoc coalition of four countries to sort out the tsunami disaster was intended as a deliberate snub to the UN, which actually has some experience of these things, such as last year's earthquake in Iran.

Plus it has groups of officials ready to deal with crisis like this one.
The standard opinion inside the Bush administration is that the UN is useless in dealing with international crisis.
It is not necessarily true, but it is an article of faith for just about everyone on the right of American politics.

Perhaps, too, there was a bit of feeling in the White House that the countries most affected by the disaster were all a bit questionable - Indonesia, with its strong Islamic tradition, say, or India, which has been traditionally wary of the US.

Political currency

But that initial phase of slowness and unwillingness to spend money is finished; now governments are falling over themselves to show how concerned they are.
In other words, they have spotted that there are real advantages in being generous.

So we are now starting to see all sorts of examples: Pakistan donating money to India, its great rival, only two years since they were waving nuclear weapons at one another, and Japan leapfrogging the Europeans and Americans and announcing a $500m aid package.

Suddenly aid has become deeply politicised.
These are the times when government aid buys respect, influence and the support of voters back home.
It is the politics of the big gesture, and if that sounds unduly cynical, the fact is that big gestures are precisely what is required at times like these.