‘Flattening the curve’ and ‘locating criminals’

It appears it’s too much to expect the authorities to mind their language. The clichés are ringing true: They’re talking through their hat and talking out of both sides of their mouth — and showing no respect to the public they are sworn, paid, to serve.

Despite the resources enjoyed by the administration’s communications arm — P1.698 billion for this year, up from P1.4 billion in 2019 — bad messaging from the top seems the order of the day, causing more distress to the already antsy body politic. And energy that could have otherwise contributed to stanching the coronavirus contagion is being expended on damage control for bizarre official statements.

As bizarre as the claim of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, made at a forum held preparatory to President Duterte’s State of the Nation Address next week, that the Philippines had “successfully flattened” the COVID-19 curve “since April.” It displayed, if anyone needed any more convincing, the caliber of those leading the Philippine response to the pandemic, who mouth things utterly divergent from conditions on the ground — 58,850 confirmed cases as of July 15, when Duque made the claim (the number was 65,304 as of Saturday), and hospitals’ COVID-19 facilities stretched to breaking point.

That, hours later, after pummelling on social media, Duque would turn around and say that the curve had actually been “bent,” not flattened, constituted more aggravation. The man whose resignation senators demanded months ago had been notably silent before he piped up at the pre-Sona forum. He was not heard from even when Malacañang was introducing the “czars” responsible for testing, tracing, isolation, and treatment, as though the chief of the Department of Health were of no moment in the latest strategy to contain the pandemic. Well, maybe he’s not. Yet he still officially holds the health portfolio.

At about the same time, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año was moved to speak of a startling idea: house-to-house searches for COVID-19 patients. The grim imagery sparked by his disclosure — policemen in military camouflage tramping through the barangays and knocking on doors behind which cowered coronavirus cases (mild, asymptomatic) and weeping family members — apparently escaped the earnest Año. Else why would he bridle at resulting accusations of a militarist mindset? Why would he complain of a “disinformation campaign” mounted by “unscrupulous individuals” when it was he who had announced the plan — one just has to roll one’s eyes at the tag, “Oplan Kalinga,” or a project of care and concern — about which, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra later said dryly, he, Guevarra, was not consulted?

Who’s in charge of communication between the governors and the governed? Is there no one to vet, to raise a peep about, provocative stuff like this, at a time when jobs are swiftly being lost, hunger is a distinct reality, and nerves are dangerously on edge?

Año has since made clear that cops will only assist health workers and local government officials in the search for COVID-19 patients and their transfer from their homes to government isolation facilities. (Now even firemen have been ordered to help in the effort.) But bad messaging has done damage to the avowed good intention — a point that Sen. Ralph Recto adroitly put a finger on: “Minsan maganda ang layunin, sabit lang ang pagpapaliwanag.”

Likewise “sabit” was the Philippine National Police chief’s breathtaking remark on the house-to-house searches: “The purpose of this plan is like locating a criminal, and when you have located one, you have to find his or her accomplices,” said Gen. Archie Gamboa. What do these words demonstrate but the prevailing view that the general public, particularly the impoverished and therefore powerless, is recalcitrant bordering on criminal? Cops on patrol killed an ex-soldier with PTSD for venturing outdoors. Barangay officials beat a fish vendor within an inch of his life for “violating quarantine.” The Palace’s Harry Roque vulgarly harangued wives and mothers for letting their menfolk out to visit their “kulasisi,” paramours.

The same Roque, commenting on the warning that the House’s killing of the ABS-CBN franchise application posed a chilling effect on press freedom, said he did not believe so because the network’s ”full-time business” was, not news, but entertainment. Yet a day after SWS released survey results showing 75 percent of Filipinos agreeing that Congress should grant the network another 25-year franchise, Roque intoned: “We lost a media partner in information dissemination…”

Surely administration officials realize the necessity of watching their language. Not so much good governance as realpolitik dictates it — as even Malacañang acknowledged in releasing an edited video of the President’s truculent discourse on how he “dismantled the oligarchy” without resorting to martial law.

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