All the actions to be taken by Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu in leading the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Cebu City will be treated as the acts of President Rodrigo Duterte, Malacañang said Wednesday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque says Cimatu, whom the President had assigned to oversee the COVID-19 situation in Cebu City, is free to exercise “all powers” to slow the spread of the virus as the cases in the city have exceeded 4,000.
But Cimatu would have to notify the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases or ATF-EID on the actions to be taken there.
“The mandate really is to do everything that can be done to avoid a spike in the cases in Cebu City and to manage the number of new cases being reported from the City,” Roque told ABS-CBN’s Headstart.
Meanwhile, as Cebu City struggles to contain the rising number of COVID-19 cases, the rest of the province is waging another battle to correct the misimpression that the health crisis is just as bad there.
As of Tuesday, the city had 4,160 confirmed infections while the province recorded a much lower number of 883—a distinction Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia said should be made clear.
“It’s just the impression that [people] can’t differentiate,” Garcia told ABS-CBN News shortly before Duterte tapped Cimatu to help fix the situation in Cebu City.
Roque said more than just giving recommendations, Cimatu would also have to give the IATF-EID regular updates.
“He will go there, he will find out what the situation on the ground is, he will make not just recommendations but will implement what he thinks should be done in a period of one week, and all he has to do is keep the IATF posted on the steps being taken,” he said.
Roque said the President could also issue an executive order to allow Cimatu to freely exercise the powers given him.
“All the actions of General Cimatu are tantamount to the acts of the President. And if need be, the President will issue executive orders to give legal validity to the actions being taken by General Cimatu,” Roque said.
He says Cimatu can exercise those powers because “he has been the beneficiary of delegated authority from the President.”
He says among these powers is allowing Cimatu to seek help from the Armed Forces of the Philippines in enforcing the enhanced community quarantine in Cebu City. But seeking help from the military should not be considered as something akin to martial law.
“We’ve normally done this, resorted to asking the Armed Forces to perform civilian duties. So this is not martial law. This has been decided upon by the Supreme Court. And this is as far as enforcing the ECQ in Cebu is concerned,” Roque said.
He says the police are normally assigned to enforce the ECQ, but if the police are not enough the military may enter the picture.
