"In contrast, these show the seriousness with which the Taiwan government took the contagion."
"In contrast, these show the seriousness with which the Taiwan government took the contagion."
These days, everybody seems to be in agreement that contact tracing as well as the distribution of food subsidies and cash assistance to the needy would have been facilitated if we had a national identification or referencing system.
I recall that I was then a consultant to Senator Ping Lacson during the time of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and one of Lacson’s pet bills was the one which provided a mandatory national reference card system, or a national ID.
It was met by vociferous reaction from the strident left and so-called or self-styled human rights activists who said such a system would be a violation of everyone’s right to privacy. Indeed, many western countries do not have a national ID also because of their state’s recognition of the value of human privacy. But almost all Asian countries do, whether in highly populous China and India, or in less populous countries like Singapore and Taiwan.
Lacson kept re-filing his bill, and it was only during the Duterte administration that the bill was finally passed into law in August of 2018. Yet to date, the Philippine Statistics Authority, an agency that was created by unifying many department-attached agencies into a single statistical management and coordination body, and unto whose tasking the implementation of the law was assigned, has failed to deliver.
Now everybody and his mother are decrying the absence of the national ID system. To borrow from the biblical injunction about the “wages of sin,” this is but one of the wages of our inaction.
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A more recent example is how we dilly-dallied on issuing a travel ban on visitors from China, where as early as December 2019, the mysterious viral disease was detected. Our gradually increasing visitor arrivals from China since the President instituted his apertura Sinica in 2016 normally peaks around the time of the Lunar New Year, which this year was during the last ten days of January.
Despite knowledge that the viral contagion was wasting so many lives in Wuhan, and that its central government had already declared a lockdown, we did not institute a travel ban until Feb. 2. Even then, we allowed a planeload of passengers into Davao, a cruise vessel in Manila, and flights into Aklan. A week later, on the night of Feb. 10 for reasons more political than health-related, our DOH officials included Taiwan, which at the time had already instituted stiff policies and actions to ensure that the contagion would not infect the population, despite its proximity and affinity to the mainland.
However, the IATF reversed the DOH in the afternoon of Valentine’s Day, or less than four days from the illogical inclusion of Taiwan. I wrote an entire column on that episode.
As of this writing, Taiwan registered 429 COVID-19 cases with six deaths, the number having spiked over the last ten days because of navy sailors who disembarked in Kaohsiung and then started their R and R all over this island of 23.4 million inhabitants.
Incidentally, the sudden spike of cases made two admirals of the Taiwanese navy resign from their posts, and the President herself had to apologize publicly for what amounted to negligence on the part of the defense establishment. The Minister of Defense likewise offered to resign.
Another incident shows the seriousness with which the Taiwan government took the contagion. Almost a month back, the son of a tourism bureau (Tourism is an agency under the Ministry of Transportation here) official arrived from a visit to the Philippines. The official asked a functionary at the Taoyuan International Airport to meet his son at the tube, and then escort him out of the airport. When higher government officials discovered the irregular “escort service,” something so common in the Philippines, the functionary and his supervisor were fired, and the head of the tourism bureau was demoted. Would such swift punishment for not following the rule of law ever happen in our country?
When we issued a travel ban on Taiwan, our DOH was proudly maintaining we only had three coronavirus-infected cases, with one death, a Chinese national at that. Taiwan had 14 cases, while mainland China had tens of thousands.
As of Saturday afternoon, our DOH admitted that we had 7,294 cases with 494 deaths.
That is what they officially registered, but many doubt the accuracy of the numbers because in the first two months of the contagion, very little testing was done, and hardly any contact tracking was made.
No one doubts the accuracy of Taiwan’s Ministry of Health, because swift actions were taken, from travel restrictions, to adequate testing, to effective contact tracking, to proper isolation and treatment, all done with daily doses of transparent reportage.
Once again, we see the wages of our inaction.
Those wages include a continuing lockdown to last at least 60 days of virtual economic standstill that has taken a heavy toll on the livelihood of practically everyone, excepting the very rich who as usual, can afford, even if their bottom lines are bleeding.
* * *
My good friend and political mentor, Congressman Ronny Zamora, has a very apt description of what ails our nation, something which he first told me when we were together in Malacañang. He was Executive Secretary and I was President Estrada’s political adviser.
“The problem of our country is we are never serious about anything,” said Ronny, repeated several times more since then.
We both served a president who held too much promise of greatness owing to massive popularity, but despite our counsel, never seemed to be “too serious” about the responsibilities of running a country for whose “masa” his personal compassion was legend.
* * *
I am deeply saddened by the death, as a victim of COVID-19, of Senator Heherson “Sonny” Alvarez. I join his legion of friends in condoling with the family and wishing Cecille, his better half, also once afflicted with the virus, a speedy recovery.
When I come to writing my memoirs which tentatively I intend to entitle “In and Out of the Corridors of Power,” Sonny Alvarez would be remembered as having fought courageously for the freedoms and democratic space we now enjoy.
I was privileged to have known him when he founded the Ninoy Aquino Movement in the United States where he was an exile. There is a long story about what we covertly did together, along with some political characters, one dead and others still alive. But that is for another article some other time.
After EDSA 1986, Sonny and I were not always on the same side of the political fence, but my admiration for his courage against great odds, always remained.
