Never rain on the parade of anyone, especially the powerful, short-fused and who have outsize temper.
The unwitting provocation, even with no malice and well-meaning, can get you more than your quota of tongue-lashing and verbal assault you don’t expect nor deserve for the rest of your life.
The American actor Lou Ferrigno, in his dual character in the hit TV series “The Incredible Hulk”, issued this caveat each time before he morphed into the green monster. “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I get angry.”
The country’s medical frontliners learned this lesson in a harsh way when they got on President Duterte’s nerves. It could have been worse had the Anti-Terror Law been in effect. It isn’t for two reasons: there is no implementing rules and regulations yet and the Supreme Court is still has to rule on its constitutionality.
It could have been a double whammy for the poor doctors and nurses who dared to speak out about their plight. With the sword of Damocles hanging, disagreeing could be crime, a serious one.
What’s the frontliners faux pas?
They appealed to the President to bring back Metro Manila to enhanced community quarantine or ECQ — the strictest community lockdown — and called for a time out.
Nothing wrong, except, perhaps, for the timing.
Prior to the frontliners public appeal, President Duterte was waxing optimistic about how things were going the way government was waging the war versus the pandemic.
“Everthing will be back to normal by December,” he said. This was seconded by a member of his choir, Gov. Ben Diokno of the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas, who was ebullient about the Pinoys’ prospects of a happy Christmas this side of the pandemic.
Duterte also was confident that China will include the Philippines in its priority list of who will get its anti-COVID vaccine, probably before the year ends.
“An optimist,” Voltaire, who create ed the fictional character Dr. Pangloss, an extremely optimistic person, said is obstinate in maintaining that we have the best even when we have the worst.”
The frontliners’ plea pricked Duterte’s outlandish bubble, and in an in-your-face fashion.
The frontliners’ message was both candid and nuanced. They were already tired, exhausted and drained. Physically, mentally and emotionally. Some of them hadn’t hugged their families for months on end due to the heavy load and avalanche of cases that have risen exponentially in the last few days.
It was the nuanced appeal which had a subtext: the government wasn’t doing enough or was doing the wrong things. The frontliners felt they were fighting a losing battle. Better regroup, calibrate the strategies that had yielded not the desired results and plan better. Stop the insanity, in a way.
They didn’t call for a change in leadership, to be sure. But they might as well have. And that was the rub that Duterte felt in his political ego. The frontliners drove home a point that he probably concluded was made at his expense.
It was bound to happen. In the U.S., American President Donald Trump is miffed that the top anti-COVID doctor, Anthony Fauci, is more popular than he is. And that’s because Fauci had the audacity to correct Trump whenever he said something medically and scientifically wrong.
For instance, at one time, Trump, whose reelection chances are dimmed by his failure to check the pandemic in the U.S., suggested the injection of disinfectant to prevent the viral infection. Fauci and other experts rebuffed him.
Duterte, a day or two before the frontliners alleged revolt, suggested the use of gasoline to disinfect face masks. Experts later said it was harmful.
For their brave statements, Duterte felt he was demeaned along with the government he leads. He even challenged them to start the revolution he said they were advocating with a revolutionary song from Les Miserables in the background.
Eventually, Duterte conceded the “revolutionaries” point with a compromise: MECC instead of ECQ. He, not they, calls the shots.
The President by now must have realized whose credibility was on the line, whose moral ascendancy could sway public opinion more in the face of the unabated spike in COVID cases. His choice was simple, choose from among only two possible signs: the doctors are in or the doctors are out.
He knew which was the right choice. It was a no-brainer. Once upon time, he said that anyone who passes the bar must have the gray matter required between the ears.
He was right about his brain. The problem about his mouth remains, though. The heart is another matter. But the Lord has left a diagnostic tool: out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
