My countrymen [sic], we continue to meet regularly to talk about our problem. Ahh… perhaps our number one problem today is the Covid.
[underscoring mine] I am as mad as you... Just this morning, in a live TV coverage, we heard this statement uttered by the person who is supposedly most informed about the state of the nation.
Not very encouraging especially since we have been battling the disease for half a year now. It perhaps makes more sense if taken as an admission of madness. But it is not. The President wanted to say that he is also like us in wanting to open the economy despite what science says—and therefore mad.
I’d say, perhaps, we are mad, indeed. At least some of us are, I posit. After all, hunger and desperation does that to a man—makes him mad.
But how did we end up like this? I’d want to know. I want to understand. Allow me then to hazard some propositions. I need to rationalize this maddening state we are now in. How I wish to hear these from the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) before Congress this month. But why would he admit his leadership’s seven deadly sins in his SONA?
Traditionally, the SONA is a means by which the President tells us how the nation-state is faring and what the Executive needs from Congress to move things forward from where the country is to where it should go.
If the President is serious about considering Covid 19 our nation’s “biggest problem” now, he should be able to offer these particular propositions as I would lay them because they are crucial in characterizing the state of our nation. In a pandemic, it should not be surprising to expect much of the SONA harping on what government has done and will be doing to help address this global health concern.
If I were the President and I were to deliver the SONA, I would point to these issues that have arisen in the last six months. It is by admitting what is
could we best move forward to a better what could be.
One: Government made light of Covid, initially. It started on the wrong foot, as it were. This suggested an underestimation of the possible impact of the pandemic on our economy and polity. Former Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has in fact noted how “President Duterte initially belittled the COVID-19 threat, dismissively saying ‘it will just die a natural death.” The President, in fact, initially did not ban travelers from China where the virus originated, seeing such a ban as being xenophobic. Hence, we had a delayed response. This gave time for the pandemic to gain a foothold in our islands. Note, too, that the first identified Covid cases in the country involved three Chinese citizens.
Two: When we were already troubled enough, instead of mobilizing our best medical personnel and scientists and letting them head the Task Force to lead the “war” against the virus, Malacanang appointed military personnel who deployed armed ground troops to manage the movements of the population. What genius! This was supposed to impose mobility restrictions, to discourage travel and hence potentially limit the spread of the virus.
Three: A flawed law was crafted—the so-called Bayanihan Heal as One (BAHO) Act. The third sin is that this law does not factor-in the true Bayanihan spirit of Las Islas Filipinas At that time. Aside from this law being blind to the power of the private sector to mobilize support and resources as seen in past calamities, its implementation leaves much to be desired. A key example is that of a certain agency headed by another ex-general and a particular political group attempting to restrict the actions of and channel the donations from civil society and volunteer groups.
Four: With the BAHO Act, budget for subsidies were allocated, but priority and focus were questionable, to say the least. The priorities seemed to have no consideration for the actual state and dynamics of the national economy. For instance, the informal economy makes a sizeable chunk of our system but it is not prioritized in the allocation of resources.
Five: Government killed off the public transportation system on which much of informal workers depend and mobility was strictly restricted from the onset even for areas where there were no infections. This only meant unemployment and hunger for many families like those of the operators and drivers of our public utility buses and jeepneys. Ironically, much later into the quarantine, there was this mobility-related issue—the so-called “Balik-Probinsiya” initiative. Government suddenly went into encouraging and facilitating the relocation to the provinces of thousands from areas of high viral concentration (NCR) to places where there were even no reported cases yet.
Six: How can government be surgical in its approach? How could they know where and how the infection was spreading with no mass testing, tracing, and treatment protocols in place soon enough? Mind you, the quarantines followed political boundaries. I did not know viruses respected political maps.
Basically, the strategy was just a LOCKDOWN to control the mobility of people to hopefully lower the rate of the spread of the disease. There was only the quarantine with its varied degrees of being restrictive of people’s mobility. The crucial triple T—testing, tracing, and treatment—was really not in clear alignment with the quarantine impositions. Note that it is only now that even Representative Garin, former Health Secretary, is calling for mass testing. Six months. No mass testing.
Seven: The national legislature was distracted, to say the least. Instead of doing its main job of oversight as regards the BAHO Act or legislating new health and economic programs in place to prepare for a post-pandemic “better” normal, it appeared more tied up with politically self-serving matters like the ABS CBN franchise issue where we find government effecting the joblessness of thousands, worsening the already record-high unemployment rate in the country.
Considering all these, I can only heave a sigh and whisper Disiplina nga yata ang problema nating mga Filipino gaya ng tinuran ng isang Anti-Covid Czar sa IATF. Disiplina ng mga Filipinong nasa pwesto.
