THE OCTA Research group, when it faces the Congressional committee on good governance in a yet unscheduled hearing, must feel like Dr. Stockmann in Henrick Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People”. The people they will come to face to face across the table are supposed to be the more intelligent type who can easily appreciate their ideas.
But they must not leave John Stuart Mills at the door. In a representative government, Mills wrote, there is always a tendency for people with low intelligence to be elected. It’s a fair warning, even if some, if not all, of the members of the House committee are no intellectual push-over.
Ibsen himself tried hard to point out in his book that what is right oftentimes suffers under might for the simple reason that the stupid has dominion over the clever.
Ahead of the unscheduled hearing, at least two prominent OCTA members have made themselves clear enough. OCTA is not the enemy; COVID 19 virus is. With that rational appeal as a dichotomy, the House committee should be able to proceed with its so-called ‘in aid of legislation’ inquiry with no hassle.
Why should OCTA be even considered an enemy, given its fair, accurate and timely warning to the public about the pandemic?
If you take it from one member of the House Committee, it’s because OCTA’s projections, especially the latest one, have been costly. The hard lockdown comes at the expense of the economy, and one can deduce the domino effect from there, from joblessness to hunger, and so on and so forth.
At the end of the day, OCTA’S projections translate into public policy, public policy into law, and law eventually into budgets which the House, being the originator of the nation’s budget, must tackle, which may mean more borrowings on top of the trillions of loans the nation has already raked in in light of the pandemic. Deficit spending and humungous borrowings are tell tales of poor governance.
Time for a heart to heart talk with those behind those projections.
So it’s a good idea, this OCTA hearing, unlike Sen. Dick Gordon’s suggestion that it is a waste of time. It won’t be, even for just providing the satisfaction to the intellectual curiosity of House members and the public at large. At some point, the House should be able to stress the group’s inescapable public accountability, even if they are private. The democratic principle of free speech and expression is par for the course, but prudence must be observed when announcing there’s a deadly snake in a crowded theatre.
But the hearing should not be handled like the way of the ancient Inquisition. The astronomer Galileo was eventually more castigated by the religious establishment for calling a bishop ‘Simplicio’, which means ‘simplistic’ than for his theory that the earth revolved around the sun at not the other way.
In the exchange between the experts and the powerful, something must not be lost in the translation. It’s a good thing, every word said in the hearing will be recorded. They can always go back to the stenographic notes for clarification, in case of doubt.
Nor should the hearing be hostile, as in the case between U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and U.S. top doctor Anthony Fauci during a hearing on the pandemic. Rand opened the hearing by warning Fauci that it was a crime to lie before a Congressional hearing. Unfazed by the unfriendly introduction, Fauci assured he had never lied before Congress at any time. The exchanges between the two went south from then on. Fauci even accused Rand of not knowing that he was talking about.
Two issues can potentially turn exchanges into hostile positions. At one time, one priest member of OCTA,after being accused by a medical expert that it is doing its projections like fortune-telling, admitted that their model is exactly like,well, fortune-telling. That may not sit well with some House members who have a contrary view point. The other issue is that the same medical expert has pointed out that erroneous data were used in OCTA analysis. In other words, wrong data, wrong projections.
Obviously, the government is practically dependent on the OCTA projections, one way or the other, even if it is not strictly, technically its client. A relevant question during the hearing should be: how competent is government to determine the correctness and soundness of OCTA’s output vis a vis the pandemic that continues its existential threat to the nation?
It is easy to say that the House hearing on the OCTA group is an issue on credibility, given the issue raised about erroneous data, among others. More than that, it is also an issue of government competence in addressing its projections given their tremendous impact on people’s lives. What OCTA is saying affects the lives of every Filipino, It is only right that the House steps in and look into that. It’s a good thing that members of the OCTA itself have welcomed the inquiry.
It’s not as if they expect themselves to be in a lion’s den. More like specimen under the Petri dish.
The American humorist James Thurber told how at one time he was made to draw a specimen under the microscopic lens in a biology class. He did as told and later submitted his finished sketch to his prof. The prof had a hard time making out of the drawn figure on the paper. He later shouted ‘ it’s your eye, it’s your eye’. Thurber, it turned out, focus the lens on his eye rather than on the specimen.
The lawmakers should know where to focus the lens of their proposed hearing.
