The new normal — where are we at? Financial Times

The new normal — where are we at? Featured

LITO MONICO C. LORENZANA
LML Polettiques
06 May 2020
Comments:DISQUS_COMMENTS
THE world today is undergoing cataclysmic changes, whose ramifications we may not comprehend fully well into the next generations. What we glimpse now of our future are simply vignettes seen through the prism of current realities, already distorted these past five months by the contagion. We reach out to the past for comparative clarity yet see only instances of similar horrific plagues. The world has been ravaged from time to time and, only a century ago, the 1918 Spanish flu killed millions in its wake; and our collective consciousness refusing to accept the inevitability of analogous results — nevertheless, the Damocles’ sword hangs over our heads. Perhaps this is part of the new normal, impelled by intermittent visits of a contagion that forces a global reset.

This column focuses this time on Philippine concerns. We just have to get on with our lives with the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) among us, permeating every aspect from our behavior to our leadership’s concepts of governance. Thus, we pick up from where we left off pre-Covid-19.

ABS-CBN
If there is anything bizarre resulting from the virus, it is that our attention was diverted away from compelling local issues prior to January 2020. These disputes were propelled by trepidations punctuated by President Rodrigo “Deegong” Duterte’s anger. I refer to his distaste for a segment of the Philippine oligarchy and the elite. At some point, the President showed his disdain for the ABS-CBN Corp.’s haughty demeanor over the years and threatened to let its franchise expire. ABS-CBN’s current 25-year franchise, which was approved by virtue of Republic Act 7966 (granted March 30, 1995), ended on March 30, 2020. However, it was actually to have expired last Monday, May 4, 2020, giving the franchisee several days to wind things up. But news from the grapevine is that the Senate and the House, principally the allies of the Lopezes, are now frantically, though surreptitiously, working out a modus vivendi for the franchise renewal. While the President and the executive branch were focused on meeting the Covid-19 threat head-on, our enterprising legislators were concerned with the vital task of serving the oligarchy. By the time this column is out, the May 4 deadline would have lapsed, and the people will have been presented a fait accompli.

Water concessionaires
Summer is upon us and the problems of water availability will become acute. What happened to the negotiations between the government and the water oligarchs? Before Covid-19, the President gave them an ultimatum, for “Manila Water Co. Inc. and Maynilad Water Services Inc. to accept a new draft of water contracts or the government would terminate their concession deals and take over their water distribution services.” In my column of Feb. 5, 2020, I specifically mentioned: “The water concessionaires may notch this one up in PRRD’s win column — for now. But time is on their side, not the President’s and, more importantly, the systemic anomalies of governance that produced the oligarchic class in the first place, will kick in sometime under the guise of the rule of law, protected by a flawed Constitution. Or they may just call DU30’s bluff, with both sides indulging in a zero-sum game. No winners, but we the people are the losers.”

Visiting Forces Agreement
I also asked rhetorically “What is the Deegong’s endgame?”

To refresh our memories, DU30 with an incongruous knee-jerk reaction triggered by the cancellation of the United States visa of his favorite ex-policeman and now senator, Ronald dela Rosa, the Deegong decided to scrap, right there and then the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) agreement with the US. I wrote on Feb. 19, 2020: “To get into the act, the Senate came up with a hurried ‘sense of the senate’ to cover for its castration of its role as guardian of treaties and agreements from which the VFA, EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement), MDT (Mutual Defense Treaty) emanate. As an afterthought, the more reasonable cabinet members have called for a deep review and thus coat the presidential faux pas as a face-saving result of DU30’s long-term assessment of the sporadic transgressions on Philippine sovereignty by America — not the invalidation of the US visa of his favored senator.”

The Philippines’ Chinafication
Before Wuhan exported the virus to the Philippines and to the world, mainland Chinese Philippine overseas gaming operators were already in situ with all the appurtenances of a conquering small army. I wrote then: “Reports are trickling down that the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong triads could be the perpetrators (of crimes among their own communities). And with the appearance of these transnational syndicates, peripheral criminal activities are not far behind.”

This has much relevance, especially at this time. If conspiracy theories are to be believed, China has definitely come out on top as their factories are now in full swing serving the health-care needs of the world from personal protective equipment, to masks, to HazMat’s, to ventilators and possibly the vaccine against Covid-19.

Faux pas on seniors and ‘Balik Probinsya’
Recently, the administration came up with a not so well-thought-out mandate to disallow persons 60 years old and above from breaking the enhanced community quarantine/general community quarantine, practically imprisoning them indoors. Although the motives were noble, the result could have been disastrous. Which brings us to the simple lesson that in a crisis environment, DU30 needs to be surrounded by good crisis managers, dispensing good and timely counsel, and not amateurs and political hacks prone to recommending public policies now and reversing themselves the next day.

And confronted with almost insoluble problems, the President allowed his favorite mouthpiece to present a knee-jerk palliative to what amounts to be a reverse migration to the provinces encapsulated in a tired piece of sloganeering — ‘Balik Probinsya.’ Depopulating congested slums in cities are an old festering problem of public policy that has confronted administrations from way back to the time of Imelda Marcos. This needs a clear vision, planning and the wherewithal. We do this now? The pasaway will certainly take the offer. They will go home, receive whatever is coming to them and after the crisis, they will seep back into theer city hovels. The solution needs a wholistic approach not a singular diktat from the presidency.

These are just a few of the concerns that the Deegong and the whole government need to face, with one eye fixed towards the raging but hopefully tamable pandemic. The stance of the elite and the oligarchy these past weeks may have softened the perspectives of the president with their cooperation and contribution toward the success of the lockdowns, enough to grant them long-term concessions for short-term gains. On this, the pandemic and the consequent hundreds of deaths may prove serendipitous for the oligarchy. A small price to pay. As I have always suggested, in the long run, in this country, the oligarchic class and the elite are in control. The government and political leadership of the moment are simply allowed a display of the worn-out and cliché-laden ‘political will.’ Despite the ongoing Covid-19, the new normal is after all, a rehash of the old normal. God help us if this were the case.000
Read 1385 times Last modified on Wednesday, 06 May 2020 09:05
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