Commentary – It’s 45 days after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the country and two days after the Duterte administration’s community quarantine-cum-lockdown of Metro Manila. Now it’s 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.
The coronavirus
threat is real, and it’s critical for the government to respond
quickly and decisively. Everyone also has a responsibility to support
every measure to stop the spread of the virus.
But what if the
government’s response is muddled and, worse, ill-conceived? Do we,
as the president said, “just follow” because it’s for our own
good? Follow, and keep silent?
There are
fortunately more than enough Filipinos who are neither blindly
adoring of Pres. Duterte nor crave subjugation. Speaking up from
outside government and especially within it, they are the best chance
to get the Duterte administration to reconsider its militarist
approach to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.
And there should be
no doubt that militarist it certainly is.
Militarist
mindset
When the president
addressed the nation on March 12, he was flanked by uniformed
military officials instead of, for instance, health and social
welfare officials. Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of
staff General Felimon Santos, Jr. was on his left and Philippine Army
chief Lieutenant General Gilbert Gapay to his right. On the first day
of the National Capital Region (NCR) quarantine, NCR Philippine
National Police (PNP) chief Brigadier General Debold Sinas for some
reason felt compelled to put on his combat fatigues when he faced the
media.
Looking beyond the
rambling delivery, the president’s March 12 announcement was
straightforward – the administration’s headline measure to
address the pandemic is a militarist population control measure. The
AFP and PNP will flex their armed might to contain and control some
16 million Filipinos living or otherwise working in the NCR. “Just
follow.”
The spectacle was an
example of cognitive bias in full play. The Duterte administration’s
authoritarian and militarist mindset is well-established – in how
it approached the problem of illegal drug abuse, in its defeatist
approach to China’s incursions into Philippine territory, and in
its hawkish approach to peace talks with the National Democratic
Front of the Philippines (NDFP). Cobbling together the most
militarized government, and Cabinet, in the country’s history only
made this worse.
The Duterte
government is irrationally predisposed to a militarist approach to
problems – COVID-19 being just the latest nail for its militarist
hammer. Other public health and economic measures aren’t given the
emphasis they deserve.
The president’s
declaration today wasn’t any more helpful and just drove the
militarist point home even more. All he really announced was a
ratcheting up of population control measures to an enhanced community
quarantine (aka total lockdown).
Missing measures
There is still
nothing about vastly improving COVID-19 surveillance and contact
tracing. The president can start with acknowledging the horribly
mistimed halving of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Epidemiology
and Surveillance Program budget from Php262.9 million in 2019 to
Php115.5 million in 2020.
More than that, even
if very belatedly, he can announce massive free testing to get a real
picture of the situation. This is the most sensible starting point
for contact tracing and managing the problem – that is, for action
based on facts rather than mindlessly and simplistically thinking
that force and militarist measures are magic bullets.
There is nothing
about assuring suspected and, especially, confirmed COVID-19 cases of
free care and treatment. He can again start by acknowledging the
likewise horribly mistimed budget cuts in the DOH’s Health Systems
Strengthening Program from Php25.9 billion to Php19.3 billion.
The number of
infected Filipinos will exponentially increase in the coming weeks.
But we are not assured that there are enough properly equipped public
health and quarantine facilities.
It’s important to
admit that hospital bed capacity per capita in the country has been
falling and hospital care more expensive over the decades of health
privatization since the 1990s. With more private beds than government
beds in the country today because of this, there is a ready
justification for declaring that private hospitals will be mobilized
to combat COVID-19 regardless of any complaints that their
profit-seeking will be disrupted. NCR has the biggest concentration
of private hospitals in the country.
There is nothing
about educating the broader public further on simple but effective
measures they can take to help stem the spread of the virus. The
presidency is a powerful platform to convince people about things
they can do to contribute to the solution. Yet, the government seems
to think that social distancing is more about enforced control rather
than education.
There is nothing
about assuring the vast millions of workers, informal sector earners,
and small entrepreneurs, that the government will support them in
this time of grave economic disruption. The pandemic will have
far-reaching consequences on people’s livelihoods especially of
low-income groups and particularly with the community quarantine of
NCR.
The president can
declare that the government will take the side of workers over
employers and ensure that they will have continued pay and incomes.
In NCR alone, businesses can afford to be helpful to their workers
with at least Php1.2 trillion in combined profits just in 2017. All
we have heard from the labor department is that they will “urge”
employers to be understanding and flexible. Helping others in this
time of crisis is apparently just voluntary and a matter of charity
rather than social responsibility.
The president can
say that hundreds of thousands of NCR jeepney and tricycle drivers,
street and market vendors, carinderia and sari-sari store owners, and
other urban poor will be protected and kept healthy. The social
welfare department has only been able to refer to its existing
assistance programs which are woefully underfunded as it is even
before the pandemic. The department has even announced suspending
pensions, unconditional cash transfers and feeding programs just when
they’re needed the most. The ‘community quarantine’ will likely
push at least hundreds of thousands into even deeper poverty.
There is also
nothing about how to protect the 215,000 inmates packed into the most
overcrowded incarceration system in the world. The administration
just made things worse with its so-called war on drugs. The
overcrowding makes them incredibly vulnerable with the many sick and
elderly within having it worst.
Prioritize people
Of course, none of
this is to write off community quarantines on principle. What is
clear is that the administration hasn’t made a case for this yet
and is just implementing it mindlessly.
A range of measures
are needed to combat COVID-19 and the narrow-minded militarism of the
Duterte administration is getting in the way of necessary and
proportionate attention to these other measures. Harsh measures
aren’t necessarily effective measures.
If the correct
package of measures isn’t taken, then it’s possible that the
virus will just spread even more. Tens of thousands of frontline
health responders working heroically will only become even more
overwhelmed. Millions of Filipinos will be unnecessarily at serious
risk. Any measures should also be sensitive to the conditions of the
country’s poorest and most vulnerable.
Which is why public
exhortations to “just follow” and actually just following are so
dangerous.
Unfortunately, this
is the kind of governance that the administration has been pushing in
the 1,354 days since Pres. Duterte took his oath of office as the
16th president of the Philippines. The capital and the country are
where we are today because of a trajectory that started that fateful
day at the Rizal Ceremonial Hall of the Malacañang Palace. ###