He showed up, and it was insanely worse
OVER the weekend when talk about the status of President Rodrigo Duterte’s health was getting wild, fueled by conspiracy theories and partisan bickering, while the entire country is being ravaged by the deadly coronavirus disease of 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, I personally asked people to set aside their political aversion toward the President and pray for his physical health. I am coming from the position that while it is easy to entertain the thought of replacing him at a time when his government has failed miserably to deal with the pandemic, the political chaos that that could bring might even be worse.
This is not to diminish the serious and tragic consequences of the failures of the Duterte government with regard to its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. This can no longer be glossed over, and no amount of sycophantic idolatry by the diehard Duterte political base can erase his culpability — from the moment he failed to take the virus threat seriously and his refusal to take initial measures to ban travel from China.
His adoption of a nonscienTIfiC OUTLOOK WAS PARTICULARLY FATAL, which was only replicated by and expressed through the equally UNSCIENTIfiC PRESCRIPTIONS AND DEcisions made by his government’s response team on many levels. We have a contact tracing system broken by an ill-advised decision to choose a technology that does not match our information and communication infrastructure. It required a system that operates on 3G smartphones when most of the Filipinos are still using 2G technology.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha is a military general and his government is, in fact, a product of a military coup. However, on the issue of the pandemic, he allowed medical scientists and experts to oversee his country’s anti-Covid-19 campaign. But not Duterte, who unabashedly appointed retired military generals to take the lead and relegated medical scientists and experts to mere advisory roles. And now, Thailand has a much lower incidence of Covid-19 — from total to active to new cases and to the number of deaths — while we hold the unenviable position of being one of the worst performing countries.
It is obvious that the militaristic stance of deploying the police powers of the state is not enough to save lives from the pandemic. In fact, it was even directly responsible for the loss of some lives, like that of the hapless man in Calamba who was mauled to death simply because he violated curfew rules. This deployment of a martial stance toward the pandemic has only engendered the kind of impunity that is as lethal as the virus that it wants to contain.
The horrors of the pandemic are something that only the irresponsible and the inhumanely insensitive can play around with, dismiss or ignore. And the cries of people losing their jobs and their loved ones demanded the President’s undivided attention.
And yet, for two weeks the President did not show up in person to talk to us, his people, many of whom lovingly call him “tatay,” or father.
Even if the President eventually
came out on Monday evening to address the nation, the fact remained that for two weeks he did not speak to us. Instead, he opted to show us images of him gallivanting around the Malacañang grounds. And people asked serious and relevant questions. If he can show us pictures and videos of him having fun, what prevented him from talking to us? What’s the difference between talking to us Saturday evening and Monday evening? His people said that he was so busy that he could not give a press appearance, even if just briefly, to talk to us. his faithful apologists paid with taxpayer’s monies were busy explaining that his health was being protected. And yet he had time to jog, ride his motorbike and play golf even if it was already nighttime.
And when he finally showed up, what came out of his much awaited, if not belated, press conference was even worse.
It was not even his cursing, to which we have already been desensitized and immune and which has lost its novelty, or his trademark meandering and sometimes incoherent talk that reveals a failing sense of logic that was offensive.
It was even less because instead of spending his energy on crafting a more systematic strategy against the pandemic that he would rather spend time attacking Sen. Leila de Lima.
What was most offensive and heartlessly insensitive was his admission that he in fact just deliberately withheld his presence if only to troll his critics. “Noong nawala ako, talagang sinadya ko ‘yun. ‘Pag kinakalkal mo ako, parang bata, ‘pag lalo mo akong kinakantyawan, mas lalo akong gagana,” he said.
The country is suffering from a pandemic. People are literally dying without getting the health care they deserve, dying from a disease that spreads because of illconceived containment strategies, inadequate testing and dysfunctional contact tracing, which his government is largely responsible for. However, the President chose to play cat and mouse with his critics instead of a timely public appearance to assuage the fears of his people and calm the uncertainty in the air.
We know that the President is unconventional. We already have an appreciation of the fact that he is strange. But we would never imagine that he would be this petty and childish. And he even gloated that he is indeed infantile. “Parang bata,” he himself admitted.
What the President failed to realize is that he just turned all his men and women, those who defended him as being too busy and made us believe that they are just protecting him from the virus, into liars.
As expected, the loyal Duterte base have now joined in the gloating, as they proudly celebrate his pettiness and infantile behavior, never mind if people are dying from the deadly virus.
I prayed for the physical health of the President when what I should have prayed for was sanity — ours and the President’s.