PRIVILEGED AND ENTITLED

SEN. Aquilino Pimentel 3rd knew he was a person under investigation ( PUI). On March 14, 2020, he already exhibited symptoms such as fever, slight sore throat, body pains and diarrhea — signs of possible coronavirus infection. He had himself tested on March 20. He should have been under self-quarantine.

At the time, the entire Luzon had already been placed under lockdown. But, this senator of the Republic broke the rules and went to the Makati Medical Center to accompany his pregnant wife, who was about to give birth, before getting his test results, from which he learned on March 24 he was positive. He was a walking virus carrier to everyone with whom he mingled.

Ordinary citizens are told to follow rules. We are asked to confine ourselves in our own homes even if we have no history of travel to coronavirus-infested areas and no record of contact with an infected person. We are told to give up many of our pleasures and conveniences. Some of us are even asked to sacrifice our livelihoods, particularly those who earn daily wages or whose income are dependent on the mobility of

crowds and the free movement of people such as drivers and ambulant vendors. We line up early to buy our groceries and prescription medicines during shortened store hours. Some us walk long distances, some as far as from Alabang in Muntinlupa City to Camarines Sur in Bicol. Some roads we take are barricaded, forcing us to go back or take a longer route.

And, we have a senator of the Republic, a former Senate president at that, flouting the rules that ordinary citizens are compelled to obey. I can just see those men exposed to the heat of the sun or those somewhere in Laguna caged like dogs simply because they violated the quarantine rules. I can only look at those hundreds now stranded in the boundary of Tagkawayan in Quezon and Del Gallego in Camarines Sur — Bicolanos who are dying to get home to their families but are now denied entry in their own home region. They end up sleeping by the roadside.

You contrast these images with that of Pimentel, technically a symptomatic PUI blatantly disobeying the rules of self-quarantine. He can always argue that he just wanted to accompany his wife. But apart from his putting the lives of his wife and baby at risk, you cannot but contrast that with the suffering of that certain man who had to walk for five days just to be with his family, or those Bicolanos who are now denied the right to go home and see their families. You compare that to the pain of those who lie ill in highly secured facilities by their lonesome, some even dying, without seeing their families. All of these because it is the rule.

What ordinary people do not have, and Pimentel has, are entitlement and privilege. He even went grocery-shopping when he was supposed to be on self-quarantine. That is the greater travesty. And he derived this from his title as senator, a position that is, in fact, exempted from the rules of quarantine, specified no less than by presidential imprimatur. Pimentel occupies a position that belongs to the privileged list of people who are not covered by travel restrictions. This includes the President and his Cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, and members of Congress and their chiefs of staff, among others.

But it would be common sense, if not decency, for anyone in the list to have the prudence to isolate themselves if they suspect that they are infected. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that being exempted from the quarantine rules doesn’t give anyone the license to be careless and to infect other people.

Well, at least Pimentel did not violate any protocol when he was tested. In his case, it was really necessary since he was already symptomatic. It was a totally different matter in the case of other public officials who got tested — some allegedly even demanded to be tested, despite being asymptomatic — at a time when we were facing a shortage of testing kits.

The Department of Health, in a move to stave off the outcry over the alleged VIP treatment, clarified that at the time, the protocol prioritizing who to test included people with possible exposure and those who are elderly and have preexisting co- morbidities. But this was only after some officials further justified the testing by saying that these are very important people whose health is paramount to the interest of the Republic.

There is no quarrel that the health of the President is of national interest. Besides, he is at high risk because of his age. But one needs to ask how the health of his immediate family should be part of that package. Granted that the protocol at the time included asymptomatic people with possible exposure, it would not be asking for too much had these top officials exercised some restraint and did like what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did in refusing to get tested despite his wife testing positive.

Sen. Maria Lourdes Nancy Binay loudly exclaimed that the thought that having only 2,000 testing kits for over 100 million people would be enough to make us panic. And true enough, she and some of her colleagues panicked. It was simply bizarre to see senators who — just days ago were wailing about the shortage of testing kits and lamenting the extreme risk this brings to the public they serve — without any hesitation went ahead, jumped the line and even had their tests taken in the Office of the Senate President the moment they learned a guest of the Senate had tested positive. Meanwhile, the less privileged and entitled have to wait for their turn in the hospitals.

These public officials may not have violated the protocol, but what they did tarnished their image as public servants who should be putting the interests of the people above theirs.