EDITORIAL - Politics of health, politics of liability

At a congressional hearing Monday into the Dengvaxia mess, former president Noynoy Aquino appealed to all concerned to set aside politics in dealing with the health crisis born of the decision made during his term to embark on a mass immunization for dengue using a drug that its French manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur now says poses certain risks.

In appealing for an apolitical discussion of the issue, Aquino is apparently of the impression that he cannot be held accountable for authorizing the release of funds for the mass vaccination and that the only reason this is so is because his political enemies see the crisis as an opportunity to get back at him. Aquino, of course, could be correct. But only if he himself is not given to some politicking of his own.

At the congressional hearing, for example, Aquino had a yellow ribbon on his barong. If anything, nothing is more recognizable in this country as a political symbol than the yellow ribbon. Yellow ribbon stickers were a major fixture in Aquino's campaign for the presidency. His anointed, Mar Roxas, made it his own when it came time for his own unsuccessful run for the presidency.

Speaking of Roxas, he unforgetably told the then mayor of Tacloban just a couple of days after Yolanda that he, Alfred Romualdez, must not forget that he is a Romualdez and that the president, Aquino, was, well, an Aquino. This was at a time of great crisis, when the devastated people of Tacloban were in dire need of help from the national government, a time when politics should have been farthest from the equation.

But there it was, standing in the way of providing immediate response to the strongest typhoon ever to hit land in recorded history. Yes, politics ought not to seep into any of the major crises that seem to make their way into this country from time to time. But unfortunately they do and Aquino is no stranger to that. Worse, any pleading to the contrary should not come from him. It only makes him look and sound funny.

There is no way for politics not to seep into the Dengvaxia picture. As many now understand it, the massive immunization campaign using the now ill-fated drug had politics written all over it. Many believe it was rushed to earn political points for an administration seeking to see itself through another successful election. With no cure for dengue, the introduction of one couldn't have been more timely than before an election. And now Aquino wants no liability, political or otherwise?