"Somebody pushed it for purely pecuniary benefit."
By now, we're all aware that the Philippines is the only country on planet Earth that made it mandatory for everyone—well, almost everyone, with the exemption of babies, toddlers and some teenagers— to wear face shields in addition to face masks as a preventive measure against the deadly novel coronavirus and its variants.
It should be pointed out that neither the World Health Organization (WHO) based in Geneva nor the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States, two of the institutions that should know better because they have the expertise and resources to do thorough scientific research, did not recommend the mandatory use of face shields even two years after the pandemic.
One scientific study, by a Filipino physicist, if I'm not mistaken, even found that face shields could even drive the coronavirus into the mouth and nostrils, where they shouldn't go in the first place.
We were made to believe by the IATF and quite possibly their panel of medical experts that face shields would "add a layer of protection" against COVID-19. But it looks like that "expert opinion" is just that—an off-the-cuff opinion without any scientific proof—motivated by something other than altruism.
Why? You would think that as the only country where wearing of face shields is mandatory, then we would witness a dramatic and consistent decline in COVID-19 cases, particularly before the vaccines from abroad started coming in. In fact, we 're among the worst performers in Asia in terms of the number of deaths from COVID-19.
That leaves us with the obvious conclusion: Somebody pushed the mandatory wearing of face shields for purely pecuniary benefit.
That means that somebody or a group made quite possibly hundreds of millions of pesos in profit from the official policy approved by the highest echelons in government.
Let's crunch the numbers. Our total population today is about 110 million. If we exclude those from age groups 0-14 ( total of 33 million) and consider only those from 15 years upward, then we arrive at a figure of 67 million Filipinos who were made to wear face shields since December 2020.
If those 67 million Filipinos had bought a single face shield each priced at P7 from local dealers in December 2020, those 67 million Filipinos spent a total of P469 million or nearly half a billion pesos for a useless contraption.
And that means the importer of mainly Chinese face shields whose brand closely resembles that of the word in Pilipino for "no" could have made a fast buck of P2 each or a total of P134 million from a single transaction (67M x P2).
But you wouldn't buy just one face shield for yourself or the members of your family. So you would have to reluctantly cough up more money from your pocket to buy more than one piece of that particular contraption made of thin plastic, just so you can avoid being accosted by brutish barangay tanods or trigger-happy camouflaged cops.
And let us not forget as well that our main source of face shields—China—did not issue a policy mandating the wearing of face shields among its 1.5 billion citizens.
While Mr. Duterte has of late decreed that henceforth, face shields are no longer required in open areas but only in closed spaces, he has practically admitted that the IATF policy is a flawed one. And who heads the IATF?
Profiteers and scammers proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic, turning the spread of the deadly virus into a golden opportunity to make a killing and laugh all the way to the bank.
Trashing the Constitution Ҭ
From out of the blue, or rather plucking something from thin air, like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, Mr. Duterte said he would call on the military to ensure peaceful elections.
What's surprising about his pronouncement was that he was offering a solution to a yet non-existent or phantom problem.
The problem should have been a potential or actual threat from anyone, or group, to foment or instigate widespread cheating, violence or even just to intimidate people into voting for favored candidates in the May 2022 polls.
There's been nothing of that sort, not even from the communist rebels who consider elections under the present system as just a rigodon of politicians from the ruling classes and therefore hardly a harbinger of genuine change.
There's been no indication whatsoever that any political party or political dynasties out to win by hook or by crook are recruiting members of private armies, or private armed groups (PAGs) as the Philippine National Police (PNP) calls them, and stocking up on high-powered firearms to impose their will or intimidate the voting population next year.
What's obvious from Duterte's recent pronouncement is that he has not read the 1987 Constitution's provision on the powers of the Comelec. There, in Section 4 of Article 9 "Constitutional Commissions, the Comelec is empowered to: "Deputize, with the concurrence of the President, law enforcement agencies and instrumentalities of the Government, for the exclusive purpose of ensuring free, orderly, honest, peaceful and credible elections."
What is clear from this provision is that Duterte by his lonesome cannot call on the AFP to ensure peaceful elections. It is only the Comelec that can order the military to do so. He has no business virtually asking the AFP to monitor the polls with their sinister presence to intimidate Filipinos into voting for him as vice president and his anointed candidates in May next year.
It is also very clear that Duterte, drunk with power, thinks that he can choose to bend the Constitution according to his own dark agenda. Or maybe he hasn't even read it at all, let alone understood what it is saying.
ernhil@yahoo.com
