Rodrigo Duterte wrong to use SONA to hit Franklin Drilon

“Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.”

—William Shakespeare

By Alex P. Vidal

PUBLIC officials, journalists, lawyers, students, social media account owners, plain kibitzers were right to claim that President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was wrong to use the recent State of the Nation Address (SONA) to lambast Senator Franklin Drilon.

It’s not the right venue, crooned Antique Governor Rhodora Cadiao, an independent-minded leader.

Iloilo third district Rep. Lorenz Defensor, another brilliant mind in the House of Representatives, had expected the president to focus on the government’s plans and responses to pressing issues such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, not to zero in on an opposition leader in the co-equal branch of government.

Criticism by any government official of a fellow public servant or whoever in the government service is normal, moral, and necessary but should be done in the proper place and time. 

When a public official attacks a fellow public official, it’s politics.

And politics should have no room in the SONA.

Politics is mudslinging. 

SONA is nation-building.

-o0o-

Since democracy was restored in the Philippines during the 1986 EDSA Revolution, no president has humiliated an opposition figure in the SONA.

A SONA is too precious to be wasted in haranguing a fellow public servant. 

A SONA must contain the “state of the nation”— where we are now, what we have achieved, so far; and where (or what steps are we going to take) we are heading too as a sovereign nation. 

People are interested about the substance, not the personality.

When they are hungry and hankering for a food to eat, they aren’t interested anymore who cooked the meal or what he did before entering the kitchen.

We expect the decent personalities among those who idolize Mr. Duterte to have the moral courage to tell the president he was wrong.

It’s not bad to be an avid supporter of a mercurial leader, but it’s morally wrong to keep quite and give that leader an Emperor’s robe-treatment if it is obvious he erred.   

-o0o-

‘THERE ARE SIX TYPES OF COVID-19.’ CBS News has reported that a new study of COVID-19, based on data from a symptom tracker app, determined that there are six distinct "types" of the disease involving different clusters of symptoms. 

The discovery could potentially open new possibilities for how doctors can better treat individual patients and predict what level of hospital care they would need.

Researchers from King's College London studied data from approximately 1,600 U.K. and U.S. patients who regularly logged their symptoms in the COVID Symptom Tracker App in March and April.

Typically, doctors will look for key symptoms such as cough, fever and loss of the sense of smell to detect COVID-19, according to CBS News.

The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, says the six different "types" of COVID-19 can vary by severity and come with their own set of symptoms.

The six clusters of symptoms outlined in the study are:

1.   Flu-like with no fever: Headache, loss of smell, muscle pains, cough, sore throat, chest pain, no fever.

2.   Flu-like with fever: Headache, loss of smell, cough, sore throat, hoarseness, fever, loss of appetite.

3.   Gastrointestinal: Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, diarrhea, sore throat, chest pain, no cough.

4.   Severe level one, fatigue: Headache, loss of smell, cough, fever, hoarseness, chest pain, fatigue.

5.   Severe level two, confusion: Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue, confusion, muscle pain.

6.   Severe level three, abdominal and respiratory: Headache, loss of smell, loss of appetite, cough, fever, hoarseness, sore throat, chest pain, fatigue, confusion, muscle pain, shortness of breath, diarrhea, abdominal pain.

The U.K. researchers also found that only 16% of patients with type one COVID-19 required hospitalization, compared with nearly half of the patients with type six, CBS News added.

Patients in the severe clusters also tended to be older or with pre-exisiting conditions and weakened immune systems, compared to those in the first three.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

The governor’s dialect

“An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.”

—Mason Cooley

By Alex P. Vidal

THE dialect spoken in Antique is Kinaray-a, while in Iloilo is Hiligaynon.

When she made an appeal to Iloilo Governor Arthur “Toto” Defensor Jr. recently to ease Iloilo’s border restrictions, Antique Governor Rhodora Cadiao reportedly spoke in Tagalog: “Okay lang kung magsara kayo ng borders pero ‘wag naman ‘yung mahigpit na border (restrictions). Kailangan namin ng suporta ninyo para mabuhay ang negosyo dito sa Antique.”

Cadiao’s statement came after Defensor, in an executive order dated July 1 restricting persons from traveling to the province from July 1 to 15, ordered the closure of Iloilo boarders as part of the travel restrictions. 

With “strict local action,” Iloilo is currently under modified general community quarantine (MGCQ).

We are not against the use of Tagalog by any public official, provided it is done only sparingly. 

It is still a lot better if we can use our own dialects as members of our own culture groups; after all, we have the right to protect our own cultural identities.

-o0o-

Promoting or using Tagalog even in ordinary conversations is always seemed as “promoting the Tagalog Nationalism”, which is actually a cultural and psychological barriers that could be regarded as “nationalist myths” that apparently justify the existence of internal colonialism in the area known as the Philippines.

Examples of such myths are Nationalism, Nation, Nation-state , One Country, National Language, and so on, which the Manila-based Unitarian government promotes in schools and government institutions, our friend Dr. Jose Paluay Dacudao once explained to us.

We can actually “demythify or desanctify these myths,” suggested Dacudao, who recruited us in 2004 to join a “movement” that would preserve our native languages.

Being human inventions, these myths are subject to the critique of human reason, he pointed out.

“For example,” Dacudao explained, “one can consider not singing or reciting them. Or a non-Tagalog, like an Ilonggo (or for that matter a Cebuano, Waray, Ilocano, Pangasinense, Kapampangan,

Bicolano, etc.), can sing and recite them in Binisaya, thus promoting

Ilonggo nationalism, which in our present social and historical context

may be a good way to oppose Manila colonialism.”

-o0o

FILIPINOs who are now US citizens or green card holders and stranded in the Philippines due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown and travel restrictions may be salivating as their fellow Filipino-Americans “enjoy” the  Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package passed in March, immediately when the COVID-19 was starting to terrorize the people from all over the globe.

But if their one-time stimulus checks of $1,200 each were received by their relatives or friends here in the USA, stranded Fil-Ams can always request that these checks be mailed to them in the Philippines where they can encash the checks.

If they can return to the US soon, they might receive their another  $1,200 checks each just in time when the Senate will OK its own version of the HEROES Act, another bill approved by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, in the last week of July.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)