Perpetual isolation

By Artchil B. Fernandez

 

On rare occasion, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque can be right. In his press briefing early this week, Roque accurately captured the status of his principal in relation to the Filipino nation – perpetual isolation. Du30 is truly detached not only from Filipinos but even from reality itself.

The disconnect between Du30 and the country is again bared in his late-night show last Monday. A frail and fragile Du30 is forced once more to face the nation as the rate of infection of Covid-19 remains steady (averaging at 4,000 daily) and the country’s economy at its worst performance (-16.5 percent) in three decades.

After hurriedly performing the ritual of reading a report on the pandemic and the ministerial approval of IATF recommendations (placing NCR and some provinces under GCQ including Iloilo City) Du30 indulged as usual into his favorite pastime, ranting, minus the customary bravado indicating his delicate physical condition. The incoherent rambling indicates how removed Du30 is from reality and the suffering of Filipinos.

Du30 spend most of the time promoting the flagship program of his administration, the bloody and gory war against illegal drugs. Filipinos can only shake their heads in disbelief, on how the leader of the land is so distant from the real situation of the nation. The most serious problem confronting Filipinos now, a matter of life and death is the pandemic and the crippling economic crisis it brought yet what preoccupies Du30’s mind is illegal drugs! What universe Du30 is living in?

Aside from marketing his pet project, Du30 also made a pitch on another issue he is very fond of, the death penalty. He lambasted the Philippines as “maarte” for spurning the death penalty. It is ghastly that as Filipinos die daily from the Covid-19 pandemic, Du30 is aggressively pushing for the death penalty, as if the current loss of human life is not enough.  How many deaths does Du30 want? Why is Du30 so obsessed and fixated with death, killing, the flow of blood, loss of human lives?

There are 27.3 million Filipinos or 45.5 percent of the adult labor force in the country at present unemployed due to the pandemic according to the Social Weather Station (SWS) survey conducted from July 3 – 6, 2020. Du30 did not even mention the dire unemployment situation in his late-night talk this week and acted as if this calamitous reality is not real.  Instead, he pretends the economic crisis is non-existent and acts as if law and order is the existential threat to the nation today by vigorously sponsoring the death penalty.  Nothing clearly illustrates how isolated Du30 is from the rest of the country than his promotion of the death penalty while millions of Filipinos are jobless.

From the start of his presidency, Du30 is already detached from reality when he tried to remake or manufacture reality by declaring there are more than three million drug addicts in the country (which he later inflated to seven million) when an official figure from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) shows there are only 1.8 million drug dependents in the country. Du30 used this fake reality to inaugurate his politics of death, ushering in the era of blood and gore with his kill, kill, kill policy. Killing is his only answer to complex problems besetting the nation. He wrongly believes that chopping off people’s head is the best solution to any problem, that killing solves everything.

This one-dimensional view of life is so ingrained in Du30’s psyche that even in the middle of a pandemic, the country in its worst health crisis in a century, all that he can think of is the death penalty. Du30 is still insisting on the fake reality he produced and is desperately trying to trick Filipinos to accept it by talking about the illegal drug problem and death penalty while Convid-19 is ravaging the land.

Bad for Du30 but good for the nation, Filipinos are not duped, not even his dwindling fanatics. Everyone knows including the sycophants surrounding Du30 that what decimate Filipinos every day at present is Covid-19, not illegal drugs. The answer to the pandemic is a comprehensive plan or blueprint on how to combat the virus, one that balances health and the economy. How should the country dance with the virus is the urgent call of the hour, not the death penalty.

Du30 is not only isolated from reality, but he is also isolated from the Filipino people. He is visibly frustrated and upset and this is manifested in his weekly late show especially when he speaks about the non-cooperation and hardheadedness of the public in relation to the hard lockdown he is imposing. Du30 has no one to blame but himself for his isolation and the non-cooperation of the public.

Instead of building trust and cooperation, Du30 spent the early months of the pandemic seeking revenge and persecuting his perceived enemies. His priority in the crucial hour at the outset of the health crisis is to pass the Anti-Terrorism Law and close the country’s biggest television network ABS-CBN. The twin moves driven by pique and revenge only widened opposition and resistance to his administration in a time when he needed the support and cooperation of the widest segment of the population.

By creating further division and expanding the political divide, Du30 made it hard and difficult for him to manage the pandemic. He badly needs public cooperation and support but lost these crucial elements in handling the pandemic by satisfying his thirst for revenge first. Now he is paying a high price for his vengeful actions with the stiffening of resistance and the multiplication of opposition to his incompetent leadership.

Citizens’ collaborating with the government is the key that enabled some countries to manage the Covid-19 pandemic better. Du30’s isolation from reality and from the people is the main factor why the Philippines is the worst country in Southeast Asia in terms of handling the pandemic. A leader in perpetual isolation lacks public trust, a critical social capital to deal with a grave crisis like a pandemic.