A frangible leadership loses control
WATCHING President Rodrigo Duterte’s performance on Sunday night was like watching a defeated general sign the surrender papers. Here was a man who had become accustomed to assuming he would never be openly defied and have his wisdom questioned suddenly awakened to the fact that he had completely lost control of a situation, compelled to endorse a certain course of action because if he did not, well, it was going happen anyway, in spite of him. It was a scene that was equally fascinating and disturbing to watch.
The collapse began on Saturday with the circulation of an “open letter” by a coalition of professional associations representing most medical workers in the country, imploring the government to reimpose an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) for two weeks. The renewed lockdown was necessary, the medical workers said, to provide some relief for health care personnel and facilities that are being overwhelmed by the rapid increase in coronavirus cases, and to allow medical experts and government planners time to assess and “recalibrate” the government’s response to the pandemic.
The Duterte administration immediately rejected this proposal, saying the first ECQ imposed from mid-March until the end of May had served its purpose and that the country would just have to find a way to live with the pandemic, as further curbs on economic activity would pose bigger problems than an increase in coronavirus cases. An upturn in cases had been expected with the easing of quarantine restrictions and, in any case, could be attributed to increased testing and the stubbornness of the public to comply with safety guidelines, the government said.
Then something remarkable happened: instead of accepting the administration’s “last word” on the subject, the country began to organize a “do it yourself” lockdown. It began with the Archdiocese of Manila suspending Masses in all churches for two weeks; a number of businesses and other organizations followed suit. Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd then announced that a two-week suspension of its sessions was under consideration (the Senate eventually unanimously agreed to it) and among the general public, a “voluntary ECQ” movement quickly gained traction and spread, with people vowing that, if the government would not impose a temporary lockdown to help the health care workers, the public would observe a quarantine on its own.
It was likely this that prodded a clearly rattled and churlish
Duterte to convene the InterAgency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases on Sunday night, and with irritated reluctance that he made sure to telegraph in every word he uttered, order a return to modified enhanced community quarantine ( MECQ) in Metro Manila and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal from August 4 to 18.
Duterte has always enjoyed formidable public support; the last formal approval rating survey conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS) last December (the pandemic has prevented it from following up on this) put his positive rating at about +76, and as far as anyone knows, if it has slipped at all in the intervening months, it hasn’t been by much.
Duterte has every reason to believe that the public would take the pronouncements of his office at face value and comply with them, because that has always been the case. Not just during his four years as president, but through the preceding decades of his political career as Davao City’s overlord. True, there has always been a vocal minority “opposition,” but it has never gained traction with much of the public; to the extent it is regarded at all, its high-school-drama-club approach to political discourse simply confuses most people and compares poorly to Duterte’s unpretentious, “regular guy” style. To have the public reject the government’s position evidently came as a complete shock to the president, and he handled it poorly, blaming the medical community for fomenting insurrection by going public with their complaints, rather than discussing them with the government.
All this leaves the country in a very dangerous situation; the biggest part of the economy is again under lockdown, one that is causing as many problems as it solves, the government has lost the advantage of initiative in managing the pandemic response and the coronavirus is still spreading unabated. Many fear that the current MECQ would not be used productively, and given the grudging manner in which it was imposed, that concern is probably not without some basis.
It could be, however. That would require a comprehensive overhaul of the entire approach, including a reassessment of the overall mission — or the creation of one, which I’m not sure has even been done — the adoption of a systems management perspective and a critically objective evaluation of the personnel involved. That’s not easy, and probably not something this government or even a team of significantly more competent and committed managers can do in two weeks, but it can be done. Watch this space and I’ll tell you how in the next issue.