IT has been about a week since 15 senators called for the resignation of Secretary of Health Francisco Duque III for his “failure of leadership, negligence, lack of foresight, and inefficient performance” in handling the country’s response to the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
The senators led by Senate President Vicente Sotto III filed Senate Resolution No. 362 seeking the immediate resignation of Secretary Duque for his performance, which supposedly resulted in “poor planning, delayed response, lack of transparency, and misguided flip-flopping policies and measures in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Almost immediately, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea said President Duterte had made a decision for Secretary Duque to remain in his position. Presidential spokesman Harry Roque commented the secretary evidently still enjoys the trust and confidence of the President.
The 15 senators’ action had come as a surprise to most people who thought Secretary Duque was doing rather well under the circumstances. The pandemic was now ravaging countries around the globe, causing thousands of deaths in each of the worst-hit countries of China, Italy, Iran, Spain, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States.
The Philippines was doing much better than these countries. On March 15, President Duterte declared an “enhanced community quarantine” – a lockdown – in Metro Manila, expanding it the next day to all of Luzon, while the rest of the country was placed under a state of calamity.
It was evidently the President himself who was making the decisions with Secretary Duque and other officials of the government carrying them out. Thus when the 15 senators charged “failure of leadership,” they should have known whose leadership they were questioning.
Secretary Duque said the senators could have been more appreciative of the efforts actually taken by the department. He said the Philippine government was able to delay the entry of the epidemic by a month, with the imposition of an early absolute travel ban on visitors from China.
The World Health Organization cited the Philippines for being one of the countries that had no report of COVID-19 infections at the time, around the middle of March, although a Hong Kong-based group said the Philippines was the least safe among the 20 Asia-Pacific nations it studied.
As of last Tuesday, the Philippines had 6,459 confirmed cases, 428 deaths, and 613 recovered. These figures are so much better than those of Italy, Spain, Iran, and the United States. Our being an island nation, separated from other nations by wide expanses of seas and oceans, may have helped. We were also among the first to impose a lockdown to get our people to practice social distancing.
The 15 senators’ call on Duque to resign has now been all but forgotten, but surely, conditions have not changed very much. If they truly believed the anti-COVID-19 effort has been mismanaged, perhaps they should be more specific and identify where changes need to be made.
