2022 (Sabong News)

It’s been quite a roller-coaster ride, our pandemic life. It’s even more complicated lately, with quarantine restrictions still uncertain and daily cases now breaching the 20,000-mark. Last July, I thought the Philippines was faring relatively better than its neighbors – Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia for example – when it came to handling the COVID-19Deltavariant. But Deltahas spiraled out of control and the government’s response is falling short.President Duterte said it was the best he could do. “I did everything. If my everything falls short, I apologize, that’s all I can do,” Duterte said on Tuesday in a recorded address. One can only imagine the overload levels of stress among IATF members, with the group divided mainly on two things – saving the economy or containing the virus. Duterte’s economic managers must be so tired just thinking about the sorry state of the economy they would bequeath to the next administration. “Sometimes in the IATF, we are a lonely voice of trying to put rationality, trying to convince people that, you know, the idea of lockdowns don’t really work for the entire community. And I agree that vaccinated people should be provided more mobility than others,” he said, referring to the economic cluster, which he later defined as a trio and sometimes a quartet in the IATF. He is pushing for the further reopening of the economy, but on the condition that bigger businesses would provide weekly testing and tracing, and move toward a rational approach to managing the containment of the virus. CGD also wants to see the vaccine roll-out in the country move at a faster pace. “Vaccinate, vaccinate, and continue vaccinating because that is the only solution that we can see at the moment,” he says. Choosing between reopening the economy and containing the virus is a tough decision, something like finding oneself between the devil and deep blue sea. History will judge our authorities for their decisions, the way they communicate such decisions, and the confusing and abrupt changes that consistently mark their decision-making process. What is clear for now is that thousands continue to get sick with the pestilent virus, millions of people have lost their jobs, and a lot of businesses have been forced to close shop; the Lim family-owned Automatic Centre, the 70-year old appliance shop in the country, is the latest to announce that it would permanently close down, marking the end of an era. It doesn’t help at all that the IATF changes its decisions at the last minute, as what happened on Tuesday when it announced that the National Capital Region would remain under modified enhanced community quarantine after earlier saying that NCR would finally ease into general community quarantine. Restaurant owners appealed to the government to do away with such last minute declarations, saying that they already made preparations for the reopening. Some of their employees already borrowed money from people to pay bills thinking they would be able to pay soon because of the reopening, says restaurant owner Eric Teng as quoted by OneNews reporter Shyla Francisco. Even Catholic priests expressed frustration as they were already preparing to welcome the faithful back to theirchurches. Against this backdrop, we are still in lockdown, the world’s longest at 500 days and counting. Schools and churches are closed, but casinos, e-sabong cockpits and some places of recreation are open. The nation’s mood is down and the people’s morale is low. It takes superhuman energy to be a citizen of this country in these trying times. But as today’s generation, we need to soldier on and work toward a better future for the sake of our children and all the succeeding generations. We need to steel ourselves to register so that we may be able to choose better leaders in next year’s elections. We still have until the end of this month to do that. Let us not be intimidated by the survey results. Each of us has the power to make a change.Let us do this civic duty for our country. Let us also help educate ourselves and everyone in our respective circles and communities to become better voters. As letter-sender, Arnold Azura who describes himself as a mid-level member of the civil service, said there is lack of maturity on the part of the Philippine electorate. Voters prefer candidates with outrageous tag lines such as riding a jet ski to Spratlys instead of substantive policy proposals, he says. “And so we haveacountry that is inavery sorry state, courtesy of an irrational electorate who choose the most spurious politicians over substantive ones,” he laments. I agree with him, but it is not yet too late. Let us not allow our eyes to get used to the darkness. Today may be bad, but we can make tomorrow brighter. Let us choose those who will think of the succeeding generations – patriots, statesmen and sincere public servants with clear plans to solve the country’s woes aside from the pandemic – from corruption to poverty. Perhaps, this is one of the hardest lessons COVID-19 taught us – how we survive a crisis will depend largely on the leaders we choose. Iris Gonzales’ email address is . Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales.Columnarchives at