‘Very funny’ – Cadiao on NIATF’s foolery

By Herbert Vego

‘VERY funny,” said Antique Governor Rhodora Cadiao on the air last Friday. She was responding to a broadcaster’s insinuation that the National Inter-Agency Task Force NIATF) had tightened Iloilo’s (both city and province) lockdown status from modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) to enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) because of two cases of Covid-19’s Delta variant found in Pandan, Antique.

The irony of it all was that Antique itself enjoys a more tolerant general community quarantine (GCQ) status, and Iloilo City is more than 200 kilometers away from Pandan.

“That was in May yet,” Cadiao stressed. “A couple from Pandan caught the disease and was rushed to a hospital in Kalibo. The husband died but the wife has already recovered.”

Ouch! That was two months ago in another place.  Why must Iloilo be answerable belatedly?

While Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. meekly received the bad news that would lock down “non-essential” businesses, Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas flared up, “We cannot afford to close all businesses if we go under ECQ. People will be out of work and everyone will be in a most difficult situation.”

The ensuing public perception pointed to the mayor’s “humiliation” of presidential spokesman Harry Roque during the latter’s arrival in Iloilo with 50,000 doses of China-made Sinovac vaccines and none whatsoever of reputable brands like Pfizer and Moderna.

“Ano laum n’yo sa amon, amô?” the mayor had hollered.

While I was writing this yesterday, incidentally, the news coming from Malaysia heralded its Ministry of Health’s decision to stop administering Sinovac due to its “limited efficacy against the Delta variant that is currently ravaging Southeast Asia.”

Was the NIATF acting under the influence of the slighted spox when they declared “ECQ” for Iloilo between July 16 and 31? Why punish 2.5 million Ilonggos just because they could not hold a candle to the mayor?

Even on the assumption that food packs would flood the city and province in the next two weeks, it would not compensate for our economy that has been nosediving for a year and four months due to on-and-off lockdowns.

The last time I saw my barber, he confessed that his employer might close down his barbershops without recovering a centavo of his multimillion-peso investments in scores of high-tech barbershop chairs and other facilities.

“Each reclining chair costs one hundred thousand pesos,” he lamented.

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OVERPRICED VACCINES

TALKING further of vaccines, I tend to believe Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who said that there could have been overpricing of over 10 billion pesos in the purchase of 89 million doses of vaccines worth about one billion US dollars.

So far, more than 21 million doses have arrived, of which 11 million-plus are China’s Sinovac.  According to the Philippine News Agency (PNA), the government had ordered 26 million Sinovac doses for this year.

“With the programmed purchase of 89 million doses, there could be an overpricing of P10.41 billion.” the senator said.

The NIATF had been mum on the purchase price of Sinovac until Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Dr. Maria Rosario Vergeire admitted before the Senate Committee on Finance that the government would pay ₱1,814.50 per dose. That amount is triple the amount paid by Indonesia, which is equivalent to only ₱600 per dose.

A PNA news report revealed that the government would spend P2,379 for two doses of Pfizer, or ₱1,189.50 per dose. Compare that to $19.50 per dose (equivalent to P975) that the US government pays to Pfizer.

The 193,050 doses of Pfizer vaccines that initially arrived are donations from the US government, not to speak of other countries that have channeled their donations through the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility.

What is the motive of Lacson, principal author of the Anti-Terrorism Act, in seemingly putting the Pres. Duterte in bad light?

Is he disappointed because he had expected a reward but in vain?

And so is he really running for President against Sara Duterte Carpio?

Time will tell.

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“LIES MAY HAVE SPEED, BUT TRUTH HAS ENDURANCE”

THAT quotation was how Marivic G. Mabilog described the triumph of her husband, former Iloilo City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog, over the reversed decision of the Office of the Ombudsman convicting him of “serious dishonesty relative to unlawful acquisition of wealth.”

In its just-released decision, the Court of Appeals nullified the August 29, 2017 decision of the Ombudsman that had pronounced Mabilog “guilty” because he could not justify the raise of his net worth from P59,358,539.89 in 2012 to P68,341,622.40 in 2013 – an increase of almost P9 million in one year which “was grossly disproportionate to his legitimate income as a public official and businessman.”

The complainant was our fellow journalist Manuel “Boy” Mejorada.

To make the long story short, the Court of Appeals’ 19^th Division in Cebu City set aside the Ombudsman’s decision, taking note of the mayor’s wife’s income as his, too. As an accountant in Canada in 2013, she earned the equivalent to almost P6 million.

I am sure a lengthier news report on this matter would find appropriate space on the front page. Suffice it to say that this development ought to disabuse the mind of President Rodrigo Duterte, who has been cussing Mabilog in public for his alleged linkage to the drug lords as source of his wealth.

Now we know that it was not to evade prosecution that Mabilog flew out of the country to an undisclosed destination in 2017; it was to keep safe.  Otherwise, he could have vanished like bubbles. Between 2016 and this year, 25 local executives (mostly mayors and vice mayors) have been killed under mysterious circumstances.

Who knows?  In better times Jed might think of coming back home to run again.