TROUBLING SHIFT FROM GCQ TO MGCQ

BE concerned that the government, via some of its major decisions, seems to be on a perpetual slide into making the nation’s predicament worse vis-à-vis the pandemic problem and economic slump.

The welcome development, however, is that President Duterte will allow the easing of all quarantine statuses as he desires, but only if and when “the vaccines for the respiratory disease become widely available” in the entire country. Such fresh news comes as proverbial “good tidings” if it means the Chief Executive is veering away from his recent approval of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases’ troubling recommendation to shift the quarantine status in Metro Manila and some provinces from general community quarantine (GCQ) to a more relaxed, dangerous modified general community quarantine (MGCQ) by next month, given the country’s prevailing coronavirus situation.

Metro Manila mayors know more, and we better listen to them. But to our economic, business and trade industry managers and other “concerned” officials, I have the following thoughts and rumination to share with you:

Who wants our economy to be so battered by coronavirus? And who doesn’t want life to normalize so that businesses can resume operations for people to be back to work and for the nation’s economy to soon recover? Nobody. Be that as it may, in light of your MGCQ proposal, ideas and realities are worlds apart. Why hasten “recovery” (or further relapse into illness)? Every country has its own peculiar stage of the pandemic plague, and we have our own. Hence, let’s not compare the Philippines to a handful other countries that have the most relaxed (or careless) quarantine rules and do as they do.

Why sacrifice the poor and needy to gratify the avaricious?

Although I’ve been into business for over 35 years now, I’m more concerned about overcoming or defeating Covid-19 for our people and nation than the welfare and transitory condition of my business. If the concern, really, is for the jobless and hungry, let the super-rich and super-wealthy in our land volunteer to do their collective share of “momentary sacrifice” (in favor of the hungry and to solve our pandemic problem) until the coronavirus is contained expeditiously and for good (for their good).

Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua counseled Malacañang or the President last month to proclaim a MGCQ status for the whole country by April to revive much of the nation’s businesses and economic activities in order “to pull us all out” of the economic rut wrought by the lockdown. As though Covid-19 is not far from over and as if there were no new and highly contagious variants of Covid-19 already creeping in on our communities. The irony in the “MGCQ” blind proposition is that it is more of an “economic protocol’ than “health protocol” which aims to solve the “spin-off problems” (or symptoms) and not the main problem.

Here’s the test: Unless the well-meaning secretary and the rest of our government officials (including big business owners) will report to their respective offices as regularly as they require their employees, would go to movie houses with their families, ride mass transports daily, go to the markets, malls and their favorite hubs as they used to do, attend big gatherings, concerts or sports events, and allow their children to go face-to-face classes five days a week — they have no grounds to recommend/implement the easing of the current GCQ measures or the transition to a more relaxed MGCQ by April or May or later this year.

Should they fall short of the test and fail to show us the evidence, sincerity and reality of their “bright ideas,” their words don’t hold water. Thus, the question: Have we, the people, any reason to believe them and do/live as they would tell us under their scheme or their MGCQ?

Do business beyond profit.