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When made public, Resolution No. 62 of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) provoked the curiosity and, worse, the skepticism of Netizens in social media. Few saw the need for it and attributed it to the sinister plot of further extending the reach of the already vast powers of the Duterte regime.

The resolution empowers the Cabinet to oversee the way the local governments of those communities that have a high rate of COVID-19 transmission have been addressing the problem. Those areas are the National Capital Region (NCR) and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal, where, according to the resolution, the members of the Cabinet, who also sit in the IATF, are expected to “provide stronger support to local government units with areas identified with (sic) high community transmission” by “strictly monitor[ing] health system performance, critical care capacity, and stringent compliance to (sic) surveillance, isolation and treatment protocols.”

There are at least four unstated assumptions in the resolution text. The first is that there is a national plan to deal with the pandemic. The second is that local government officials have either not been doing enough to contain the contagion, or have not been implementing the policies and approaches mandated by the plan to effectively address the COVID-19 problem.

The third assumption is that what local governments have been doing and have instead prioritized are programs of their own making. The last is that every member of the Duterte Cabinet is familiar with the plan and will see to its implementation once they immerse themselves in the affairs of the local government units (LGUs) of the NCR and its four outlying provinces.

Unfortunately, the existence of such a national response plan is either one of the best-kept secrets of the government, or a myth and an illusion. The spiraling increase of cases of Filipinos afflicted with the COVID-19 virus has given the Philippines the dubious distinction of being first in Southeast Asia in number of infections despite the country having been under lockdown for the longest period. It feeds the widespread suspicion that no master plan was ever devised or even contemplated when the first cases were discovered last February, and that the government has been reacting to problems as they occur rather than anticipating them. The country would have otherwise returned to some degree of normalcy by now, which other governments, such as those of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, have demonstrated is possible. Their national plans of action made the numbers of people infected in those and other countries negligible compared to those of the Philippines.

Some LGUs have indeed been improvising their own responses to the pandemic. But that they have been forced to adopt this or that program of action in dealing with the impact of the contagion in their communities suggests that they have pretty much been left to their own devices because of the absence of clear guidelines from the national government. Among those programs are the barangay-by-barangay, sitio-by-sitio, street-by-street lockdowns and other initiatives they enforce whenever COVID-19 cases in their localities are reported.

But one of the more compelling pieces of evidence of the absence of a master plan is, among others, the national government’s hasty return-to-work order, which it issued while hardly making any provision for the support services needed, such as transportation. The most number of infections is also occurring among those who have resumed working. In reaction, the government is only now requiring face shields as well as face masks to be worn at work and other places.

There is the equally precipitate order by Mr. Duterte to immediately repatriate dismissed Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) from where they were working abroad back to their communities in the Philippines. It was issued regardless of the possibility that those who may have contracted the disease but are asymptomatic can infect their family members and neighbors.

The consequences have only been short of disastrous. The spread of COVID-19 in previously contagion-free areas in the Philippine countryside is in fact being attributed to that decision and to the equally foolhardy “return to the provinces” scheme concocted by Duterte associate Christopher “Bong” Go that the regime is also implementing.

All these make Resolution No. 62 one more reactive attempt to curb the rate of increase in the number of people infected with the virus. Its mandate is similar to what has been previously tried, among them the government response to the increase in the number of infections in Cebu City last June.

When the number of infections surged there, President Duterte dispatched Interior Secretary Eduardo Año, supposedly to support the local government but in reality to practically take over its anti-COVID-19 campaign. The consequent decrease in the number of infections in Cebu presumably made the case for the IATF decision to arm the Cabinet secretaries (themselves) with the prerogative to directly intervene in the conduct of the anti-pandemic programs of the local governments of the NCR and the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal.

Assuming, however, that Cebu’s case is a real success story, the local government executives of the above-mentioned areas could very well argue that what worked there may not necessarily work in their respective jurisdictions. They could also point out that among the LGUs that have succeeded in somewhat taming the contagion and alleviating the suffering of their poorer constituencies are those of Marikina, Pasig, Makati, and, to some extent, Manila.

The first argument is consistent with the primary reason for the passage of the 1991 Local Government Code: that it is not the national government but the LGUs that know best how to address the problems of their communities. That assumption may not be valid in some instances, since whether it is sound or not depends on the competence, honesty and commitment of local leaders. But there is enough evidence to prove its worth in this country, where power has been so centralized in “imperial Manila” that it has retarded the growth of the rest of the Philippines.

Both demand the adoption of a policy of only selective national government intervention in the localities that should be based on a sound and non-partisan evaluation of the success or failure of local government programs not only in connection with the pandemic but also with other issues of governance and national preparedness. There is no visibly sound national plan, for example, to mitigate the impact of global warming on the Philippines that environmental groups have been saying will most certainly be catastrophic. Such a policy should have long been in place, together with the national response plans needed to effectively address the COVID-19 public health crisis and those other national calamities that regularly afflict the Philippines.

Planning for future contingencies has never been any administration’s strong suit, despite the constant threat of natural and man-made disasters against the people of this country. It is not uniquely characteristic of the Duterte regime. But the absence of any sense of urgency that should have moved it to enlist the country’s health and other experts in the making of a national plan to address the pandemic and mitigate its impact seems particularly pronounced. Unfortunately, the lethal consequences of the ad hoc and reactive government-by-improvisation approach are being demonstrated at a time of great peril to this unhappy land and at the cost of Filipino lives.

Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro).
www.luisteodoro.com

Published in Business World
August 20, 2020

Featured image from the PHILIPPINE STAR/EDD GUMBAN

The post Government by improvisation appeared first on Bulatlat.

The Department of Justice has announced that an interagency body will investigate the extrajudicial killings, carried out one week apart this month, of peasant leader and peace consultant Randall Echanis, 71, and human rights cum health worker Zara Alvarez, 39, single mother of an 11-year-old girl.

Echanis was murdered along with his neighbor inside his rented apartment in Novaliches, Quezon City at past midnight on Aug. 10. Alvarez was shot dead while walking with two others to her boarding house in Barangay Mandalagan in Bacolod City in the evening of Aug. 17.

In both cases, the killings have been generally attributed to state security forces, which the authorities have perfunctorily denied.

The DOJ announced the twin probes amidst continuing denunciations, cries for justice and calls for independent and impartial investigations from various groups here and abroad. Specifically raised were appeals to the United Nations human rights bodies and the International Criminal Court to look into these cases. On Aug. 18, representatives of cause-oriented organizations, human rights and peace advocates gathered at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in a “Global Day of Action for Justice” to honor the lives and martyrdom of Echanis and Alvarez while denouncing their murder and all EJKs.

Notably, the two killings and the more than a hundred others under the Duterte government – 134 already, according to the human rights watchdog Karapatan – have been linked, through public statements, to President Duterte’s repeated provocations since 2017.

The Commission on Human Rights, in its report released last month on the situation of human rights defenders [HRDs] in the country, stated: “The President, through his pronouncements, created a dangerous fiction that it is legitimate to hunt down and commit atrocities against human rights defenders because they are enemies of the state.”

Thus, the constitutional body said, the prevailing climate of impunity in the violence inflicted upon HRDs is “largely attributable” to Duterte’s own words. On the latest killings, the CHR said it saw these as “a cause for concern, especially that the number of cases is still growing and justice is nowhere in sight.”

On its part, Karapatan, which claims Zara Alvarez as the 13th of its workers extrajudicially killed under the present dispensation, said: “We consider any pronouncement by the president and his minions, especially before the public, as inciting harm on and killing of activists and human rights defenders as direct orders for state forces. Any jeer, any comment, any post [on social media], any poster, and any case filed [against them] should be considered as acts of complicity or inducement.” Any unsolved case, it stressed, “is an act of tolerance or acquiescence.”

Bayan Muna, whose many leaders, organizers and campaigners have become victims of EJKs since 2001, said: “President Duterte is ultimately accountable for publicly threatening human rights activists and practically ordering their killing. Despite his cowardly denial of his involvement in EJKs [the denial was actually made by his spokesperson], he has not publicly withdrawn his threats against activists nor ordered the perpetrators to stop the killings.” The electoral party’s chairman, lawyer Neri Colmenares, urged the ICC to probe and file a complaint against Duterte over the activist killings carried out under his watch.

Now comes the DOJ spokesman saying that investigation on the Echanis killing is “already underway” with the composite team tasked to do the work given one month “within which to submit a report on its findings.” (Such a deadline of one month gives an impression of earnestness and trust in the competence of the investigators, some people say.) As regards the case of Alvarez, the spokesman said the probe body’s secretariat has already recommended its inclusion in its docket.

However, doubts have been raised over whether the investigating body can truly undertake an impartial investigation into the two latest EJKs and other cases. You’ll find the reasonable ground for these doubts after looking into the nature, composition and apparent inertia of the investigating body.

The probe body, created by Administrative Order No. 35, signed by then President B.S. Aquino III on Nov. 22, 2012, has quite a long name. It is called the “Inter-Agency Committee on Extra-legal killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and other grave violations of the right to life, liberty and security of persons”.

AO 35 invokes seven of the state policies under Article II of the 1987 Constitution valuing the “dignity of every human person”and guaranteeing “full respect for human rights,” which for lack of space I cannot list down here. It acknowledges that “throughout the years… there have been reported and validated violations of the above-declared rights of the individual.” These “have served to create an impression of a culture of impunity” wherein, it adds, “security establishments of the State and non-State forces have been accused of silencing, through violence and intimidation, legitimate dissent and opposition raised by members of civil society, cause-oriented groups, political movements, people’s and non-government organizations, and by ordinary citizens.”

There is need to revisit these unsolved cases, AO 35 says, whether committed as “part of an apparent government policy in the past or as recurring cases of unsanctioned individual abuse of power and authority by State and non-State forces under the present.” It declares as “paramount policy” to do away with these forms of political violence and abuses of power.

Who should implement such paramount policy? It’s the Inter-Agency Committee, headed by the justice secretary as chairperson, with the following members: the interior and defense secretaries, the presidential peace adviser, the head of the presidential human rights committee, presidential adviser on political affairs, and the respective chiefs of the AFP, PNP, and NBI. Note that at least five of nine members belong to the “security establishments of the State” implicated in HR violations sought to be stamped out. So can the probe body be expected to be impartial in investigating the killings?

Mind this: AO 35 mandates the Inter-Agency Committee to submit reports to the President after every six months “describing the inventory of cases according to category… the accomplishments and progress made for each case, or problems and obstacles encountered, highlighting problematic high-profile cases from past administrations and violations committed during the present administration, and further recommendations for any additional actions that may be taken by the President requiring coordination and common course of action with the (CHR), Ombudsman, Congress and Judiciary.”

Has anybody read or even heard about any such report having been submitted to the president, much less the disclosure of what such report says? I haven’t. Maybe Justice Secretary Menardo Guevara can enlighten us on this very crucial matter.

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Email: satur.ocampo@gmail.com

Published in Philippine Star
August 22, 2020

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