Are doctors in politics with the left?

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

 

LAST week, a statement titled “Second Opinion” circulated on social media supposedly crafted by a group of doctors and health workers.

At first glance, the article appears to be genuinely concerned with the plight of the medical sector in the frontlines.

The issues raised in the article focusing on boosting efforts of the medical sector to help combat COVID-19 are valid and should be considered by the national government.

But when it pointed to the community quarantine as applied by IATF today as the source of the continued contagion of COVID-19, while insisting on quarantine based on health factors, the article was clearly leading to an agenda to mislead the public.

It is shortsighted of the “medical sector” behind the article to think that they, as medical practitioners, alone can properly implement a quarantine that will effectively check the contagion.

If the police, army and barangay officials are having difficulty imposing discipline and enforcing health protocol in communities, how can doctors, nurses, health workers even be remotely expected to compel their thousands of patients to strictly and observe home quarantine? And are they willing to accept responsibility for failure of communities to observe health protocols? If the medical workers already claim to be overworked and exploited, they are certainly asking for more than they can chew if they insist on their medical/health-led quarantine and reject IATF’s policy.

The motive became more obvious and the article eventually lost its credibility by wading in politics, wittingly or unwittingly. Days earlier, medical associations vehemently and correctly denied politics as their motivation behind their presscon. In sharp contrast, the article is demanding the ouster of Health Sec. Duque and all retired military officials and czars, while protesting the “fascist” system.  The article fully exposed itself as a propaganda of the Makabayan bloc.

I stand corrected if my view that no doctor or health worker in his/her right mind who seeks to protect integrity of his/her profession would recklessly express support for extreme left’s politics, is wrong.  Only the left-wing groups use the word “fascist” liberally in everything they say and do.

So wonder no more if Sen Riza Hontiveros is loudly endorsing the article.

The article expressing genuine concerns for welfare of medical sector could have still earned some credibility if the list included the affiliations of listed doctors and nurses with hospitals, offices and clinics, just like when everyone is required to provide detailed info about themselves when entering any establishment.

So I strongly suspect that the list of claimed supporters that simply have (MD, RN) affixed to the names is fake. The names could have been easily drawn from a voters’ list.

Leave it to the creative political enemies of the government to exploit every conceivable misstep of government to destabilize it.

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LESSON FROM MECQ. If there’s a lesson to be learned by local governments in Pangasinan from the recent decision of IATF to impose a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) in Metro Manila and nearby provinces, it was the weak enforcement of health protocol in communities that led to the downgrading of their status. 

It is frustrating as it is disappointing that political detractors of the Duterte administration merely continue to mislead the public by pointing to the “faulty” and “incomprehensive” policies of the government’s Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) whose mandate is no different from similar bodies created by other countries.

The IATF policy to update the citizenry of direction, status and statistics of the campaign vs. COVID-19 and this is regularly done, pointing out confirmed cases, recovered cases and deaths from where local governments can deduce the weaknesses and strengths of the campaign.  It’s not the IATF but member agencies that act on strategies and polices from IATF.  

More specifically, the burden of implementing polices lies with local governments, meaning DILG, not IATF.

In this regard, it is the duty of DILG directors in local governments to monitor and report level of compliance of mayors and barangay kapitans in enforcing health protocol. Apparently, IATF has not been getting the right information and on real time to enable it to calibrate its direction and policies.

This was what happened to the provinces that were placed on MECQ. The decision was in fact late in the day because there was more focus on the  distribution of Special Amelioration Program (SAP) than in the strict enforcement and implementation of health protocol.

Guv Pogi would be well-advised to stay on top of mayors and kapitans before Pangasinenses become fully complacent in implementing the health protocol. The province has everything to gain if our mayor mayors and kapitans are on the job 24/7 because the governor is their COVID-19 watchdog.

I hope Guv Pogi will find it in himself to preempt IATF in its expected decision by appointing or designating COVID marshals in all towns and cities in Pangasinan to ensure that the province doesn’t backslide and compel IATF to recommend MECQ for Pangasinan.   

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STUPIDITY OR IGNORANCE? The Lim administration in Dagupan City just did a first in the city’s political and governance history.

It went on record to say that the mayor’s office will refuse to work with an ad hoc committee of Sanggunian Panlungsod in preventing and controlling the “COVID-19 pandemic and other future outbreaks of diseases”!

Does Mayor Brian Lim think Dagupan City government is no different from Jayceeism that he can refuse to work with a government body mandate by law?

I’d like to think it’s more of ignorance on his part than stupidity not to know that the legislative is an equal branch of the executive in governance.  Or is it both topped by hubris?

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