It\u2019s 45 days after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the country and two days after the Duterte administration\u2019s community quarantine-cum-lockdown of Metro Manila. Now it\u2019s the eve of an enhanced community quarantine (i.e. lockdown) in the whole of Luzon. There is much more anxiety, fear, and panic than there should be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coronavirus\nthreat is real, and it\u2019s critical for the government to respond\nquickly and decisively. Everyone also has a responsibility to support\nevery measure to stop the spread of the virus. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what if the\ngovernment\u2019s response is muddled and, worse, ill-conceived? Do we,\nas the president said, \u201cjust follow\u201d because it\u2019s for our own\ngood? Follow, and keep silent? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are\nfortunately more than enough Filipinos who are neither blindly\nadoring of Pres. Duterte nor crave subjugation. Speaking up from\noutside government and especially within it, they are the best chance\nto get the Duterte administration to reconsider its militarist\napproach to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there should be\nno doubt that militarist it certainly is. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Militarist\nmindset <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the president\naddressed the nation on March 12, he was flanked by uniformed\nmilitary officials instead of, for instance, health and social\nwelfare officials. Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of\nstaff General Felimon Santos, Jr. was on his left and Philippine Army\nchief Lieutenant General Gilbert Gapay to his right. On the first day\nof the National Capital Region (NCR) quarantine, NCR Philippine\nNational Police (PNP) chief Brigadier General Debold Sinas for some\nreason felt compelled to put on his combat fatigues when he faced the\nmedia. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking beyond the\nrambling delivery, the president\u2019s March 12 announcement was\nstraightforward \u2013 the administration\u2019s headline measure to\naddress the pandemic is a militarist population control measure. The\nAFP and PNP will flex their armed might to contain and control some\n16 million Filipinos living or otherwise working in the NCR. \u201cJust\nfollow.\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The spectacle was an\nexample of cognitive bias in full play. The Duterte administration\u2019s\nauthoritarian and militarist mindset is well-established \u2013 in how\nit approached the problem of illegal drug abuse, in its defeatist\napproach to China\u2019s incursions into Philippine territory, and in\nits hawkish approach to peace talks with the National Democratic\nFront of the Philippines (NDFP). Cobbling together the most\nmilitarized government, and Cabinet, in the country\u2019s history only\nmade this worse. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Duterte\ngovernment is irrationally predisposed to a militarist approach to\nproblems \u2013 COVID-19 being just the latest nail for its militarist\nhammer. Other public health and economic measures aren\u2019t given the\nemphasis they deserve. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The president\u2019s\ndeclaration today wasn\u2019t any more helpful and just drove the\nmilitarist point home even more. All he really announced was a\nratcheting up of population control measures to an enhanced community\nquarantine (aka total lockdown). \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Missing measures <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is still\nnothing about vastly improving COVID-19 surveillance and contact\ntracing. The president can start with acknowledging the horribly\nmistimed halving of the Department of Health\u2019s (DOH) Epidemiology\nand Surveillance Program budget from Php262.9 million in 2019 to\nPhp115.5 million in 2020. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than that, even\nif very belatedly, he can announce massive free testing to get a real\npicture of the situation. This is the most sensible starting point\nfor contact tracing and managing the problem \u2013 that is, for action\nbased on facts rather than mindlessly and simplistically thinking\nthat force and militarist measures are magic bullets. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is nothing\nabout assuring suspected and, especially, confirmed COVID-19 cases of\nfree care and treatment. He can again start by acknowledging the\nlikewise horribly mistimed budget cuts in the DOH\u2019s Health Systems\nStrengthening Program from Php25.9 billion to Php19.3 billion. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The number of\ninfected Filipinos will exponentially increase in the coming weeks.\nBut we are not assured that there are enough properly equipped public\nhealth and quarantine facilities. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s important to\nadmit that hospital bed capacity per capita in the country has been\nfalling and hospital care more expensive over the decades of health\nprivatization since the 1990s. With more private beds than government\nbeds in the country today because of this, there is a ready\njustification for declaring that private hospitals will be mobilized\nto combat COVID-19 regardless of any complaints that their\nprofit-seeking will be disrupted. NCR has the biggest concentration\nof private hospitals in the country. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is nothing\nabout educating the broader public further on simple but effective\nmeasures they can take to help stem the spread of the virus. The\npresidency is a powerful platform to convince people about things\nthey can do to contribute to the solution. Yet, the government seems\nto think that social distancing is more about enforced control rather\nthan education. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is nothing\nabout assuring the vast millions of workers, informal sector earners,\nand small entrepreneurs, that the government will support them in\nthis time of grave economic disruption. The pandemic will have\nfar-reaching consequences on people\u2019s livelihoods especially of\nlow-income groups and particularly with the community quarantine of\nNCR. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The president can\ndeclare that the government will take the side of workers over\nemployers and ensure that they will have continued pay and incomes.\nIn NCR alone, businesses can afford to be helpful to their workers\nwith at least Php1.2 trillion in combined profits just in 2017. All\nwe have heard from the labor department is that they will \u201curge\u201d\nemployers to be understanding and flexible. Helping others in this\ntime of crisis is apparently just voluntary and a matter of charity\nrather than social responsibility. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The president can\nsay that hundreds of thousands of NCR jeepney and tricycle drivers,\nstreet and market vendors, carinderia and sari-sari store owners, and\nother urban poor will be protected and kept healthy. The social\nwelfare department has only been able to refer to its existing\nassistance programs which are woefully underfunded as it is even\nbefore the pandemic. The department has even announced suspending\npensions, unconditional cash transfers and feeding programs just when\nthey’re needed the most. The \u2018community quarantine\u2019 will likely\npush at least hundreds of thousands into even deeper poverty. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is also\nnothing about how to protect the 215,000 inmates packed into the most\novercrowded incarceration system in the world. The administration\njust made things worse with its so-called war on drugs. The\novercrowding makes them incredibly vulnerable with the many sick and\nelderly within having it worst. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prioritize people\n<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, none of\nthis is to write off community quarantines on principle. What is\nclear is that the administration hasn\u2019t made a case for this yet\nand is just implementing it mindlessly. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n A range of measures\nare needed to combat COVID-19 and the narrow-minded militarism of the\nDuterte administration is getting in the way of necessary and\nproportionate attention to these other measures. Harsh measures\naren\u2019t necessarily effective measures. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the correct\npackage of measures isn\u2019t taken, then it\u2019s possible that the\nvirus will just spread even more. Tens of thousands of frontline\nhealth responders working heroically will only become even more\noverwhelmed. Millions of Filipinos will be unnecessarily at serious\nrisk. Any measures should also be sensitive to the conditions of the\ncountry\u2019s poorest and most vulnerable. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is why public\nexhortations to \u201cjust follow\u201d and actually just following are so\ndangerous. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, this\nis the kind of governance that the administration has been pushing in\nthe 1,354 days since Pres. Duterte took his oath of office as the\n16th president of the Philippines. The capital and the country are\nwhere we are today because of a trajectory that started that fateful\nday at the Rizal Ceremonial Hall of the Malaca\u00f1ang Palace. ###<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" COMMENTARY The coronavirus threat is real and it\u2019s critical for the government to respond quickly and decisively. But what if government\u2019s response is muddled and, worse, ill-conceived?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-withbanner.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,2050],"tags":[2199,347,2200],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9202"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9271,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions\/9271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBY SONNY AFRICA<\/p>\n