THE PANDEMIC has constricted people’s vocabulary to binaries, not the newspeak of the Orwellian kind but more of the fewspeak. At times, though, both genres are conflated to betray official mendacity or outright deception.
And the jury from the sector of experts, who know better, is out: government approach to the virus rampage is anything but competent. It’s dumb or dumber. Take it from a former health secretary not too long ago who described the current COVID 19 situation as worse than before it began. How do you define something that started as a tragedy and then morphs into something else? Farce, an idea of Karl Marx, may even be an understatement. To be forewarned is to be forearmed going into the 2022 polls.
Best practice? Forget about it. There seems to be none, or there are but those running the anti-COVID campaign just don’t get it or have never learned a valuable lesson or two.
Two words characterize people’s frustration to the situation: despair and distrust. It doesn’t matter which comes first because they yield the same result. If people are still undecided – many them anyway—to have themselves shot with the vaccine, especially the Chinese brand, it’s due to lack of trust, of the vaccine and/or of those who propose it.
The impact of the so-called ‘influencers’, who have jumped the priority line to get ahead at the expense of those who should get it first, hasn’t really moved the needle. More would rather keep their arms at, well, arm’s length with a ten–foot pole.
It’s not the ‘influence’–, stupid; it’s the immunity from the bug. But somehow, those who have honored the priority rule more in the breach have gotten away, not with murder, but moral homicide. The show–cause order issued by the government is no more than a slap in the wrist or going to the motion of enforcing the law.
Public conversation about the pandemic have revolved around binaries: positive or negative, symptomatic or asymptomatic, vaccinated or vulnerable, senior or on the way. The virus has been the great equalizer since the party-list system. Its victims are no longer admitted or, worse, cremated according to the usual have –or– have– nots–yardstick. Much of the existential or nihilistic questions that arise and come around – what’s happening to the world — are no longer deeply rooted in the great divide of, following Perry Pangan’s dichotomy, of atinan or alanan. (Go back to the previous sentence, please). Everybody is the virus’ target now.
Still, all things being equal, the rich have the advantage of choice by virtue of wherewithal.
While many are obviously gaming the system in the name of public welfare, an oxymoron in both theory and practice, someone very special look the other way. Not even his alter egos appear to mind that it’s happening before their nakes eyes or are, in fact, doing the gaming themselves. Politics has essentially been Darwinian, survival of the fittest or of the kapalmuks. The road to hell, a successful coach but a less successful politician was quoted as saying, is paved with good intentions. It’s a veneer game, Bembol, even one that involves dribbling the truth or bouncing it off people’s face.
In the face of such willy-nilly leadership, people are naturally worried about the country’s leadership. The binary question is: is he sick or healthy, dead or alive. Finally, he had made it known to all and sundry, without the benefit of an interpreter or a mouthpiece, that his absence was deliberate. He, forthwith, advised his detractors and ill-wishers to pray pa-more for his departure. He didn’t mean politics, because the countdown has long started. But, it’s too soon to count him out.
Mysteriously, the Absent-in-Chief, made himself scarce at a time when China practically conducted a naval invasion of the Julian Reef in the South China Sea. The air force mission that flew over the China armada of 200 or militia ships didn’t hear” this is a drill” but was rudely warned for flying over Chinese territory.
His consistency is suspect, Xi Ping’s disciple. He said he wasn’t willing to fight a war with China, given the latter’s superiority, man and machine-wise. Former Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio has already made it clear that there is a huge distinction between saying no to rape and former senator Raul Manglapus’ much recommendation to just grin and bear it.
So much about the faked jet-ski adventure in the making.
Until the pandemic is over or President Duterte’sterm is finally completed without any interruption, from above or below, Filipinos will just have to settle with the practical binaries of day to day existence. It’s either a face mask or a face shield. Go out or go hungry, bug or bread. Life has been such a dire strait these days, not just because of an invisible bug but a nearly invisible leadership. In the former, a mask or a shield may be a safe bet. In the latter, you know what you see is what you get, with or without a mask.
