Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 94
At the start of the President's televised meeting last night (because let's face it, those late-night telecasts are not actual public addresses), he made an odd remark where he stated, "Tomorrow or the day after, after I talk to the businessmen, then we can decide whether or not modify the lockdown we have imposed." When I read that transcribed statement as a tweet (because I never watch these things live anymore), I got more than a little upset. Here we were at the technical end of the last declaration of the quarantine state in Metro Manila and other provinces and the speech started with him being wishy-washy about making a decision. It has been bad enough that in past weeks the decision related to whether or not quarantine will get extended is made a few days before the end of the current quarantine state, but wait until the very last moment? That's just total disregard for everyone else who needs to make decisions for their businesses and their families in terms of what to do next given these unusual circumstances.
After the initial ramble, our DOH secretary read out IATF Resolution 46A with the implication that this was the official decision that the President had signed off on, but to be fair it wasn't 100% clear. But all the news agencies ran with the IATF recommendations as gospel truth given the national government has almost always accepts these IATF resolutions wholesale. So, for the most part, this seems to be the policy until the end of June and already the Presidential spin machine is trying to explain away the weird "talk to the businessmen" comment as something that will supposedly happen beyond 30 June. Business as usual at the Palace, if we can even call it that.
Being frustrated about the government feels very old hat at this point. It keeps happening, especially during these past months of quarantine, but then nothing is changing any time soon. And here I am writing about my frustrations in a protected blog that hearkens back to my old LiveJournal days when I had the option to publish friends-only posts that were limited to my LJ friends. It's a very weird time to even consider being critical of the government's actions, what more to write about it, but here we are. And we can only hope for the best and that we'll get through this global pandemic with the country still relatively intact.
Comments
Post a Comment