‘Hypocrisy beyond compare’

If you were a Filipino citizen afflicted with a rare and serious illness, had been confined in the best hospitals of the land, whose doctors fear the “worst” as you risk sudden death if not immediately operated on abroad, and you have the means to seek foreign treatment but your government keeps denying you your constitutional right to leave—what would you feel? I am, of course, referring to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The Aquino administration insists it must first independently verify the real state of Arroyo’s health; and once her real condition is established, it will need to determine if there are specialists and facilities in the country capable of treating her. Well and good, if yes; if none, foreign specialists and facilities would be brought into the country (Inquirer, 8/18/12).

Methinks that in its consuming hate of Arroyo, this administration has not only become callous to humanitarian sensitivities; it has also needlessly painted itself to appear grossly irrational before the eyes of the public. What “independent verification” of Arroyo’s condition does the administration still really need? Hasn’t she been already confined in several hospitals, public and private, alike? If the government suspects one of its own hospitals to be lying—in other words, seemingly biased for Arroyo—then it has a very big problem at hand. Imagine your own employees practically being that untruthful to you! On the other hand, isn’t it an equally big insult to the highly revered private hospitals in the country and to the doctors speaking for them to be virtually perceived as “not independent” in announcing the former president’s true state of health?

The administration says that if Arroyo needs a team of experts (i.e., neurologists, neurophysiologists, biomedical engineers and medical researchers)—this is the first time I heard of such medical experts—it would be brought into the country to treat her. Ah, that is the kind of irrational government behavior—nay, perhaps just laughable ignorance of its very own laws—that I was earlier talking about. I mean, doesn’t this administration know, as most people certainly do, that foreign doctors are not licensed or legally allowed to practice their professions in the Philippines?

Meanwhile, this case is a matter clearly involving one’s health. Why should it then be the budget secretary, not the health secretary, who is shouting to the four winds about Malacañang’s stand on the former president’s appeal for a few more days to live? That sadly compares, indeed, with Ferdinand Marcos allowing Ninoy Aquino, then already a convict, to seek medical treatment in the United States; and with Arroyo herself permitting Joseph Estrada, then already on trial for plunder, to have his knee treated in Hong Kong, if I remember right.

Meanwhile, the Palace was recently reported to have wished Arroyo good health. If that wish is not hypocrisy beyond compare, I don’t know what is!

—RUDY L. CORONEL,

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