Contradictions
Instead of shedding light on the controversial P3.5 billion Dengvaxia anti-dengue vaccination campaign that has now potentially placed more than 830,000 people at risk, the appearance of former president Noynoy Aquino at last Thursday's Senate hearing only succeeded in entangling him in a maze of contradictions, leaving the whole country even more perplexed.
Moreover, Noynoy was never asked the tough questions despite his being at the very center of the mess. He was treated too deferentially. While there is a need to treat him with the respect reserved for those who once held the highest office in the land, this should never be at the expense of truth. There are ways of getting to the truth without having to be disrespectful. But it seems the senators were overwhelmed by his presence. They did not rise up to the challenge.
For example, when Noynoy testified that the decision to purchase Dengvaxia, an anti-dengue vaccine newly developed by Sanofi, arose from fears generated by a report early on in his term that a 1,000 plus percent increase in dengue cases was noted in Region 8, why did nobody pounce on the fact that Region 8 was not among the areas to be applied the vaccine when the campaign eventually rolled out?
One would have thought that since Region 8, or Eastern Visayas, was the eye-opener for Noynoy that triggered his fears and set off the whole shebang, it would have been at the very center of the campaign. It should have been part of the original rollout. But no, Region 8 was out. Only the National Capital Region, Calabarzon, and Central Luzon were included. I hope the exclusion had nothing to do with the family names often associated with Region 8, like what happened after Yolanda.
And then Noynoy again caught himself in another contradiction. Asked about the seeming haste to roll out the campaign, coming as it did just one month before the 2016 elections, Noynoy explained there was a need to rush, first, in registering the vaccine with the Food and Drug Administration and with the national formulary, and second, in finding funds for the program as his term was about to end. Perhaps the senators forgot that rushing is not a word in Noynoy's vocabulary.
Speed has never been a virtue to him. In fact, his very own name is the inspiration for a term coined during his term -"noynoying"- which, when loosely translated, means loafing, idling or dilly-dallying. Also, finding funds for immediate spending has never been the forte of his administration, which was notorious for underspending, and then realigning the resulting savings into what has come to be known as DAP.
And then Noynoy said everything was done in order to save lives, which is interesting considering that, in the same testimony, he admitted never doing any due diligence research on Sanofi, which, in examples enumerated by blue ribbon committee chairman Richard Gordon, had been numerously fined and penalized for a number of infractions. A leader intending to save lives leaves no stone unturned in trying to determine what he is about to embark on is safe for his people.
The shit really hit the fan in November when Sanofi, on its own, announced that those who have been given Dengvaxia but have never been exposed to dengue faced certain risks. But as if not truly understanding the gravity of the situation, Noynoy almost nonchalantly told the Senate investigators that at the time he decided to go ahead with Dengvaxia, nobody told him anything about it. You do not wait to be told if you really want to save lives, Mr. President. You find out yourself.
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