“I thought that the President was the only one allowed to rant.”
The disastrous meltdown of Secretary Harry Roque who berated the president of the Philippine College of Physicians, Dr. Maricar Limpin, in a virtual IATF conference, is coming back to haunt him. Now, his United Nations appointment can be in jeopardy.
Whom did he think he was talking to, anyway? One of his underlings?
To be fair to Roque, he issued an apology. Unfortunately, what he uttered was an apology with a caveat. He said that he was sorry if he hurt some people with his outburst—but his messaging stays. We know of course, that an apology issued with a condition is no apology at all.
What exactly was his message in that outburst of his? The video that the public watched on social media only lasted for about a minute. Roque was seen completely losing control of his faculties, shouting at the doctors calling them people and saying “how dare you think that the government does not care about people’s lives?” He also added that “this group has never said anything good about the government response.” He could have said all those firmly without losing his composure.
Whatever message that the secretary was trying to impart was lost. The video is there for everyone to see and judge. Roque was so livid that it says it all. Limpin, who was thoroughly bewildered by Roque actions, simply said that she did not say or do anything that deserves that kind of outburst from Roque. She did not have to say anything at all to defend herself.
I have also attended similar conferences while still in government. Sometimes, a conference could indeed become heated but I have never seen someone so senior lose composure the way Roque did in that video. In fact, there was a voice in the video cautioning Roque to relax which he ignored. We do not know exactly the personalities attending that virtual conference. We can only assume that they are cabinet rank officials. If so, Roque’s outburst somehow gives us an indication that his clout must have grown tremendously in the intervening months that he can afford to behave that way.
I thought that the President is the only one allowed to rant. If even his subalterns can do that, what sort of executives do we have in our government bureaucracy? In a conference, attendees must be able to express their views freely without being lambasted. That way, decisions can be arrived at in an intelligent manner. We need cool, composed and thinking officials.
What happened was unfortunate, of course, but that can partly explain why our government is second to the last when it comes to pandemic response. As I have written earlier, the government is always going for the middle-of-the road solution in its pandemic response by trying to balance the pandemic and the economy.
In New Zealand, the government completely closed the city of Auckland when one Delta variant infection was detected. No wonder there was only one death there in four months. Here, the government declares a lockdown but allows many exemptions so that the economy can still function. I can understand that. But that is not prioritizing Filipino lives as Secretary Roque wants us to believe.
This is one reason why over the last several months, infections have not really gone down at all. Instead, infections have increased tremendously to where we are right now. The playing-it-safe solution as we can see is not working as our vaccination rate is not fast enough. Even if we can vaccinate the majority of Filipinos, we are not sure of stopping the spread of the virus. Israel, the country with one of the greatest numbers of vaccinated people on a per-capita basis, cannot stop surging infections that we just banned travelers originating from that country.
We have to make painful decisions in order to lower infections.
Being the mouthpiece of the President, Roque’s main duty is to announce government decisions approved by the President. Whatever personal views he has on issues do not count. It’s not clear whether he was given authority by the President to speak for the Office of the President in that conference but judging by the way he spoke and behaved, he must have been given the authority. Why else would he speak that way unless he exceeded his instructions?
Whether he did or not, my unsolicited advice is for him to apologize unconditionally. It’s never late to do the right thing. Prudence is the better part of valor—unless the Secretary wants his meltdown to define his legacy.
