The troubling news of a highly transmissible Delta variant ravaging huge swathes of Southeast Asia is just the latest in the whirlwind that has been the Philippine experience of the pandemic. Second only to Indonesia in terms of reported COVID-19 cases in the region, the country’s economy contracted by a record 9.6 percent last year amid a brash and chaotic response that has consistently ranked as among the worst in the world.
In countries that had held elections over the course of pandemic, such as the United States, the polls unsurprisingly became a referendum on how incumbents managed the response. In the Philippines, there does not seem to be a similar repudiation. A recent survey conducted by the Manila-based Pulse Asia Research, Inc. revealed that more Filipinos are likely to support the candidacy of Sara Duterte, daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte and mayor of the family’s bailiwick in the south. Meanwhile, Rodrigo Duterte himself emerged as the frontrunner for the vice presidency in next year’s elections.
By contrast, just six percent chose Vice President Leni Robredo, who is being touted as the opposition candidate, good enough for the sixth spot. Even boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, whose senate stint has been marked by chronic absenteeism and subpar performance, ranked higher, with eight percent. (It’s worth mentioning, however, that Robredo had shown little interest in the political race and was busy at work, while the robust machinery of her prospective opponents had been all but unleashed.)
Such survey results could be due to a number of things. One could be the reign of disinformation, thanks to well-coordinated troll armies on social media and the narrower space left in the wake of media giant ABS-CBN’s shutdown. Some also say that many Filipinos value the otherwise paltry subsidies that the government gave out early in the pandemic, obscuring the other disastrous aspects of its response. Yet another reason could be Duterte himself, who is on track to make his exit with his wild popularity largely intact.
Whatever it is, the pandemic continues to magnify key aspects of the country’s historically vibrant but fragile democracy—from its usual susceptibility to personality politics to even the limits of the electoral system. In the wake of a pandemic that has taken tens of thousands of lives and caused incalculable suffering, however, what is likely to be the most important election in recent memory becomes a matter, quite literally, of life and death.
Death of Noynoy Aquino
When former president Benigno ‘Noynoy’Aquino III, Duterte’s immediate predecessor, died in late June, the inevitable taking stock of his legacy cast into sharp relief the extent to which the political situation has deteriorated over the last five years. From the brazen corruption in the bureaucracy to the murderous “war on drugs” and the damage on the media landscape, the comparisons are stark, striking at the heart of the good governance that Aquino had made the centerpiece of his leadership.
Inevitably, too, people hypothesized as to how a government led by Aquino would have handled the pandemic. After all, the Duterte government’s response is characteristic of how it governs before and beyond COVID-19: the knee-jerk reliance on law and order and brute force instead of compassion, the confused and confusing relaying of information, and the blatant kowtowing to Beijing, this time as part of the latter’s attempt at vaccine diplomacy.
The comparisons became even more interesting when a 2016 video surfaced in which Aquino talked about how the government handled the threat of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, years earlier. In the short clip, Aquino explained how they mobilized the bureaucracy when a Filipino citizen returning from overseas by plane tested positive for the virus.
Recounted Aquino: “There were five of them. Now we’re going to check on just the three people per the immediate vicinity. They never stood up to go to the washroom. They never talked to somebody in a different row, etcetera, because we’re supposed to necessitate direct physical contact. So at the end of the day, I ordered our agencies … the Department of Health, law enforcement, etc. to look for all, I think 418 passengers, at that point in time. We were successful.”
This lucid, detail-oriented explication of the contact-tracing process not only differed from Duterte’s meandering, often expletive-laden and contradictory weekly address, it nipped a potential spread in the bud. The Duterte government’s contact-tracing efforts barely got off the ground. A year into the pandemic in March, contact-tracing czar Benjamin Magalong conceded that there was technically no contact tracing that was taking place.
It may be argued that the lack of this crucial component in the response meant the government was doomed to always be one step behind in getting the pandemic under control. This, among other failures, could well be the root of the endless, rolling lockdowns, which are always costly, militarized, and prone to abuse.
Robredo’s responses
Viable alternatives to such gross mismanagement and the violent governance from which it emerges can also be glimpsed in the measures undertaken by the Office of the Vice President. These include the online consultation platform Bayanihan E-Konsulta and the Swab Cab, a mobile testing facility that brings testing closer to communities that are seeing surges.
They are alternatives in that they get the job done without coercion. For instance, in one community in Malabon, one of the 16 cities that make up the sprawling capital region, 1,300 people were swabbed thanks to incentives such as rice and food packs good for two weeks for the families should they test positive for the virus. Robredo also urged the government to provide more aid to those affected by the lockdowns amid the record hunger during summer that saw the mushrooming of community pantries all over Metro Manila.
If the Philippine opposition had their way, the country’s vice president, Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo, would be their top bet for the presidential elections in May next year. In recent surveys, though, she’s trailing behind a world boxing champ, an action star’s daughter, a former dictator’s son, a city mayor, and the feisty daughter of the current president. (Photo by UN Women Asia & the Pacific licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
This approach offers a sharp contrast to the punitive spirit with which the Duterte government conducts its policies: from the chaotic checkpoints early in the lockdown to the threat of arrest against those who refuse vaccination. The consequences can be dire, as in the death of a curfew violator in Cavite, south of the capital, in April.
The striking difference carries repercussions for the country’s broader political situation ahead of the polls in 2022. For their part, Filipinos are among the most compliant in the world in terms of mask-wearing and social distancing, which means the people do their part, and more, in collectively keeping the ship afloat even and especially during times of emergency.
This is evident, too, in how community pantries spontaneously appeared in hundreds of communities to help address hunger, or in how people and organizations continued holding protest actions demanding accountability despite the atmosphere of fear.
Complemented with an able and compassionate leadership, this strong commitment to civic responsibility could well have prevented the dire numbers—1.5 million cases, more than 26,000 deaths—that instead reflect a failure of governance. Yet, the Duterte regime not once has admitted any shortcoming, instead choosing to deflect blame, silence criticisms, if not peddle outright lies.
Implications on democracy
In the case of Duterte, such aversion to criticism speaks of a broader aversion to the kind of collaborative, consensus-driven ethos that animates democracy, which the tumult of a protracted pandemic only served to amplify. In addition, the railroading of the heavily criticized Anti-Terror Law at the height of last year’s lockdown and the wanton killings and arrests of left-leaning activists signal just how systemic—and dangerous—this aversion is.
There is little debate as regards the Duterte government’s authoritarian tendencies, a clear example of which would be how he filled every COVID response task force with retired generals instead of scientists and doctors, which then reflected in the policies that are enacted on the ground.
Filipinos lining up for their anti-COVID vaccines. Many see the vaccine rollout moving at a slow pace, but how the government’s performance in their anti-COVID response will affect the voter’s choices in the elections in May 2022 remains to be seen.
The link between things like public health and governance is clear in this light, and both Aquino’s legacy of good governance and Robredo’s people-centered projects only add weight to the increasing clamor for the Duterte government to do better. Indeed, allies and supporters of Aquino and his Liberal Party predict that his sudden death could “reshape” the 2022 race.
But the outpouring of grief, while emphasizing Aquino’s legacy of good governance and impressive economic numbers, dangerously glosses over the disenchantment over what was seen as non-inclusive growth, which paved the way for Duterte and his brand of populism. The problems that the pandemic exposed had long been there: from the chronic underfunding of public hospitals to the lack of industries that would have allow the country to manufacture vaccines locally.
Ignoring this lesson could simply restart the same cycle. The current impasse demands going beyond easy narratives that cast politicians as messiahs and to instead pay attention to what the people need—exactly what Robredo’s interventions manage to do. Less than a year before Filipinos troop to the polls, determining the right path is crucial in light of a fragmented opposition, an election that may further imperil a battered democracy, and a pandemic whose ravages appear to be far from over. ●
Glenn Diaz is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.
The banner image for this article is a derivative of “File:Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte 09.jpg” by Addustour, Jordan Press & Publication Co. is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 by Joven Peralta.
