POLITICS IS NOT FOR SNOWFLAKES

“SNOWFLAKE” is a term used to refer to people who are sensitive to criticism, are easily hurt, and usually whine and complain publicly about how deeply hurt they feel. Some diehard Duterte supporters (DDS) have used this pejorative word to attack the President's critics, who they paint as crybabies that cannot stand the President’s disruptive worldview. These DDS make it appear that the President makes offensive statements on purpose to rile his critics, who as snowflakes would erupt into an orgy of public wailing, one that amuses the DDS no end.

These loyal Duterte supporters miss an obvious attribute of their political icon. Or if they have not, they simply ignore it. If there is one person who feels hurt easily by public criticism and by offensive speech, it is the President himself.

When the medical frontliners made a plea in media for a break, a two week timeout in the face of the specter of our public health system being overwhelmed by a surge of Covid- 19 cases, Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. revealed that the President’s feelings were hurt. This is the reason why he publicly lashed out at them, even appearing to threaten them, and taunted them to wage a revolution against him. Roque intimated that the President was outraged by the fact that the medical professionals opted to make their plea public through media, instead of writing him a personal, and presumably private, memorandum or manifesto. Their public move, according to Roque, was the last straw that irritated the President, who was apparently so affected by the spate of criticisms his government was getting due to its mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So, here we are now, confronting an extraordinary public problem that requires a public action on the part of government, and all the President wanted was a personal, private and transactional representation from an interest group that has an enormous stake in the issue because its members are toiling at the frontlines, and are risking their lives. The President appeared to be more concerned with his feelings, the same way that he was concerned about not hurting the feelings of China during the initial stage of the pandemic, instead of focusing on how to inspire the frontliners and listen to their gripes and concerns.

We certainly cannot blame these groups of medical professionals for airing their legitimate concerns in public, considering how their profession has been grossly sidelined in the determination of public policy in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. This is not the first time that medical professionals have aired their concerns, all of which were either ignored or paid lip service to. The medical profession appears only in the background in the operations of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases. The call of many in the profession for the sacking of Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd, a medical doctor himself, for his failure to adequately represent medical science in crafting public policy was ignored by the President. Instead, he responded by affirming his total trust and confidence on his Health Secretary despite the latter’s missteps and booboos.

The President must be told. The running of state affairs is a very public enterprise. Public issues and public policies are debated in public, and it is not unnatural for interest groups to publicly declare their positions and their grievances. This is the very essence of deliberative democracy, where issues should be publicly declared and debated, and where processes within political institutions should be made public and must be publicly scrutinized. It is not the kind of decision-making that characterizes transactional processes seen in influence-peddling and rentseeking, where secrets are traded in exchange for favors at the expense of public interest.

This is precisely why politics and public affairs should never be a haven for snowflakes. Public service cannot be the nesting ground for onion-skinned people who cannot take the pressure of public opinion and scrutiny. Elected officials, and even appointed ones, should be ready to take the brickbats from an angry, frustrated public. And with people dying, the number of cases reaching six figures, and hospital-bed capacity nearing the brink of being overwhelmed, the least that public officials can do is to bear the brunt of the public’s fear and rage.

This is not the time for personal hurt to prevail over the pursuit of public interest. It is certainly not the proper time to take every bit of criticism of government action, or inaction, as a malicious attempt to undermine and destroy it. But this is now what is coming out of the President’s spinmeisters in social media. They now color-code the medical professionals to diminish the validity of their concerns. It is horrifying to watch the spectacle of medical frontliners being bashed as if they are enemies of the state during a time of a deadly pandemic, simply because they dared to publicly air their concerns that the President now considers not only as a clarion call to a revolution but as a personal attack.

It is so brazenly offensive that we now see some Duterte apologists demeaning the service of medical frontliners, branding them as useless, and comparing them to those military and armed personnel wearing olive green uniforms who they claim to be the ones saving lives while the medical frontliners are just all talk. It is utterly depressing to see ordinary people now attacking medical frontliners as privileged, well-paid and selfish simply because they dared to publicly air their concerns.

The reactions from the President and his loyal enablers are nothing but irrational responses to the very valid concerns aired by medical frontliners, who they now even accuse of being partisan tools to bring down the President.

Snowflakes are people who lash out and whine irrationally when criticized. They take every criticism as a personal attack. It is clear from this who are really acting like snowflakes.