"You can’t wash off entitlement even if you sang Happy Birthday 100 times over."
Perhaps it’s the instinct of self-preservation. You’ve been meeting with many people or may have travelled to another country in the past few months or so. Given the frightening news, you would want to know whether you have the virus or not. You would like to be sure that that you have not exposed your loved ones to danger as well—even if neither you nor them are experiencing symptoms in the first place.
What if you are a public official who made an oath to serve the people and place their interest above yours?
What if you know that your country does not have adequate testing capacity in terms of test kits and facilities to run those test kits?
And what if you know all too well that others have worse symptoms, and that hospital frontliners get exposed to the virus every minute they are at work?
Would you still get yourself tested?
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Amazingly, many public officials did. Some of them actually went on social media documenting their experience.
“Salamat sa Diyos!” One senator exclaimed as he relayed the news that he had tested negative for COVID-19. “Dalangin ko po ang kaligtasan ng bawat Pilipino.” There was a medical worker beside him when he took a gleeful selfie. Certainly he did not look like someone who spent a few harrowing days waiting for his results.
How his piece of good news could be related to the safety of every Filipino is a logical leap we cannot fathom.
A governor of a province south of Manila admitted he may have skipped protocol and triage algorithms in having himself tested. “I take full responsibility if you think I took advantage of my position.” The second clause, the one with the “if,” rankles. One should take full responsibility for one’s actions; it does not matter what other people think.
Other VIPs got tested even if they did not show any symptoms—some Cabinet members, some senators including one who is in the perpetual company of the President, and even the President, his children and his common-law wife.
All these amid the woeful dearth of testing kits.
On Sunday, a series of screen shots from an insider at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine made the rounds of social media. The conversation detailed what was really going on at the testing facility: VIPs were getting, well, VIP treatment. They had their own code, their own queue.
“I could just retch at what these evil politicians are doing,” the worker said in Filipino. “There were days we had to stop the testing for Persons Under Investigation to give way to the VIPs. I could just cry.”
Those VIPs, the worker said, sent over their samples to the RITM with instructions that they be prioritized over the others. There were even threats of suspension if the results were not released within 24 hours. These demands did not just apply to the VIPs but to their entire families. “The whole family of [former senator jailed on plunder charges, and who lost the senatorial race in 2019] we released the results yesterday.
Another senator had the gall to demand a repeat test just to make sure the results were really negative.
The RITM worker said that the RITM head was being made the scapegoat and being replaced by another. A subsequent document circulated Sunday evening confirmed this development—and then on Monday, Health Secretary Francisco Duque “clarified” that RITM director Celia Carlos is not being replaced. Somebody else was just coming in to “help” her.
The special codes, according to the RITM worker, have since disappeared. But the VIP samples remain with the samples from ordinary citizens who are Persons Under Investigation. Again, denials. The senator who posted a selfie insisted he had felt symptoms. Yet another senator said he used an unregistered test kit. The DOH issued a document vehemently insisting that there is no “palakasan” going on.
Sure.
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The number of positive cases has risen exponentially in the past few days. If the additional kits do come—and we hope they do, very soon—we should expect the numbers to surge still. Only if we get an accurate picture of how badly we are really affected can we adequately combat this pestilence. How can you treat when you don’t know whom to treat, and how many they are?
Meanwhile, what does this practice of VIPs jumping the line amid the deadly shortage of testing kits tell us?
It tells us that even in the worst of times, some people continue to believe that they are more important than others. They believe that they are entitled to special privileges by virtue of their stature in society—never mind that their peace of mind will mean life or death to other people.
It tells us that it is this sense of privilege that will doom our society, because decisions are made based by those whose judgments are skewed in their own favor to begin with.
It tells us that when confronted, they will only give lame excuses for their behavior.
What, then, can we do? Today in this crisis, while we keep ourselves healthy and prevent the virus from spreading, it suffices that we do the work online. We post about injustice, write about injustice, and demand accountability from our leaders even only from behind our computer screens.
When we’re better and stronger, in the next elections, perhaps, we’ll see how we can wash them off as vigorously and thoroughly as we wash our hands.