What on earth is happening at this barangay in Laguna’s first district?
While COVID-19 cases are zooming up, the barangay’s top officials are busy filing suits against each other.
The barangay captain has already been suspended for 90 days (by the city council, take note, not the Department of Interior and Local Government) following accusations of graft and corruption.
The charge was filed by some barangay councilors who accused the captain of “abuse of authority and misconduct in office” for not filing the barangay’s budget for nearly six years.
However, the captain believes “dirty politics” is at work here as some of the councilors who filed the cases were known supporters of the current local executive with whom he locked horns in the mayoralty race a few years ago.
I’m not taking sides on this issue. After all, this particular captain is not blameless, as pictures have gone viral last year of him relaxing on a beach at the height of the pandemic’s first wave.
But the fact remains that as officials of this barangay continue to throw mud at each other, the barangay’s residents are now living in anxiety due to the recent sudden spike in COVID-19 cases in their village.
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A year after what has been called by some to be the “longest lockdown” in history, the Philippines is still clearly struggling to find a way to control the pandemic.
Now don’t take that from critics of the President – experts in the field believe that we are “back at square one” when it comes to COVID-19 response.
In fact, according to former Health Secretary Dr. Esperanza Cabral, we actually took “ten steps back” due to the slow rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, the relaxation of the quarantine, and the emergence of new variants that are much more contagious.
And the more worrying trend? Experts say that the next mutations could turn out to be more deadly and may even resist the vaccines currently available.
I believe the problem started when some of the President’s economic team members pushed for a “gradual” opening of certain sectors of the economy to recoup the losses in the economy due to the pandemic.
Once those sectors opened, it’s became the Wild, Wild West. Minimum health protocols were not properly imposed. Everyone became careless. And it didn’t probably help that some government officials flouted the very rules they imposed on ordinary Filipinos.
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The trouble is, some government officials seem to be in denial mode. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, in particular, became the target of mockery after insisting that the government’s response to COVID-19 is still “excellent”, despite all statistics showing otherwise.
A columnist from the Pilipino Star Ngayon once noted that most “populist” world leaders who downplayed or denied the severity of the virus ended up facing a crisis no amount of PR or “papetiks” could control.
The lesson? The virus does not give a damn about your political affiliation. All it cares about is infecting your body.