BY JHIO JAN NAVARRO
AMID the aggravating COVID-19 crisis, the Philippine Senate granted the Chief Executive “Authorized Powers” through Senate Bill No. 1413, otherwise known as the “We Heal As One Act”. This seems imperative — if only Rodrigo Roa Duterte is not the President. For even as the threat of the pandemic exists, the prospect of totalitarianism throttling through the veneer of crisis response becomes real and palpable with Duterte in the helm.
Senate Bill No. 1413 declares a state of national emergency all over the archipelago which serves as the rationale for granting the Chief Executive “Authorized Powers.” Among these powers — which the Senate President has so adamantly denied to be “emergency powers” — is to “reprogram, reallocate and realign any appropriation in the FY 2020 GAA…” and to “allocate cash, funds, investments, including unutilized or unreleased subsidies and transfer…for whatever purpose the President may deem necessary and desirable to fund the measures to address and respond to the COVID-19 emergency.”
The crucial question here is: What would the President “deem necessary and desirable”?
Duterte’s authoritarian response of employing military personnel to impose lockdowns and curfews at the onset of the pandemic is hint enough, that it betrays the “necessary and desirable”.
Cargo-loads of M-16s and ammunitions, a couple boxes of testing kits and perhaps a few PPEs – for cronies. This is a worst-case scenario, but one that is not at all improbable.
The Bill, moreover, stipulates that the Chief Executive has the authority to “[e]nsure that all Local Government Units are acting in line with the rules, regulations and directives issued by the National Government …” Obviously, this targets proactive LGU Chief Executives who have tried to push for alternative course of action prescribed by the Office of the President.
Why is the Executive Department hell-bent in forcing LGUs to abide by its one-cut-fits-all directives?
Doesn’t it realize that local chief execs got a better grasp of the necessities of their locale and constituents? Is it that difficult to recognize that the view from Malacañang is not necessarily the view from South Cotabato, or Iloilo or say even with the neighboring Pasig?
Are Malacañang’s functionaries so proud to acknowledge that some LGUs respond better than the so-called “National Government”? Why are they adamant to make LGUs stand-down? Why don’t they step-up?
For already, Vico Sotto of Pasig has managed to procure drones for area disinfecting and Iloilo’s Jerry Treñas facilitated the acquisition of 2,500 test kits, without the intervention of the “National Government”.
It is dismaying that instead of support, what LGUs receive are litanies, reprimand, and now the coercion sanctioned by a new law being deemed deviant in responding according to their constituents’ needs. If anything, this only demonstrates dictatorial dispositions and utter intolerance, and neglect of the unique positions and sentiments of citizens, of the electorate.
Then, the ultimate question of all: Why enact this law when the relevant provisions of existing laws are not yet fully harnessed?
The President, with the authority he possesses, can sign an order for mass testing. This is what the public are yearning for yet up till now there is none. The pursuit for this “special powers” renders the law in a malicious light. And, no one can really blame the discerning populace for #NoToEmergencyPowers.
It is not at all far-fetched to speculate that soon the whole country will be put under a national lockdown where the power and authority is centralized to the Executive Department. Though the law provides that, “[n]othing in this Act shall be construed or interpreted as a restriction of the Bill of Rights or of the Constitution,” bending the law to acquiesce to a despot’s will to seize absolute power is not at all unheard of (Marcos once did it). This will especially be true when this period of fear, panic and confusion impairs and destabilizes our democratic social institutions.
“Is the total lockdown of Italy,” asked thinker Slavoj Zizek on the socio-political repercussions of COVID-19, “not a totalitarian’s wet dream come true?”
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This article is also published in the Facebook Page of Pagbutlak, the official student publication of University of the Philippines Visayas, College of Arts and Sciences. (jhionav14@gmail.com/PN)
