Political virus
Leni Robredo does not like the way President Rodrigo Duterte is leading the fight against the coronavirus, especially with what she perceives to be an overemphasis on the role of the police and military in enforcing certain directives. So she has been going to town telling everyone who cares to listen what she feels about Duterte's style of fighting this unseen enemy.
But in so doing, Robredo only succeeded in exposing to the whole nation exactly just how shallow and petty she is. Robredo forgets that she is the vice president, that in the moment it takes fate to change the course of destiny, she would exactly be in the situation Duterte is in. And that, in times of great crisis like this, she herself would not want to be distracted. She would want everybody on board in this fight of our lives.
Yet Robredo just cannot go beyond the pettiness of her politics. She just had to criticize because she is in the opposition. That is the way she sees her role and so she plays it to the hilt, never mind if the situation makes any display of political hysterics at this time uncalled for and can only make her even more irrelevant than she already is.
As my wife correctly suggests, it would do everyone more good, even for Robredo herself, if she goes to Malacañang, sees the president, and tells him, hey, let us set aside politics for a while. Here I am, the vice president. I should be right beside you in this. This is my fight too. Go ahead, tell me what I can and must do and I will do it.
What a wonderful feeling that would be. Even just thinking about it gives me the goosebumps. But if Robredo had been capable of seeing things that way, she would have done it already. But no, she just could not go beyond her own self. And so, while Duterte even publicly begged the NPA for a ceasefire just so he can concentrate on the fight against the virus, there goes the vice president of the land continuing to fire away at a political enemy.
To be sure, the fight Duterte is leading is not perfect. The fact that the disease has become a pandemic only shows that no country and no leader in the world saw it coming, much less was prepared for it. When the fight started, everybody had to go with what they had at the moment, proceeding on how best they thought the circumstances would allow.
Every country and every leader in the world forced to fight this fight had to go day by day, taking stock of situations as they develop, and going on again, still day by day. There are no fixed rules of engagement against something you cannot see. And yet there goes Robredo blowing her horn as if she is the expert, as if she knows better than all the struggling leaders from Donald to Duterte and everyone in between.
If Robredo can contribute neither expertise nor good sense to this terrible fight, then it would serve the nation and her imperiled countrymen well if she simply shut up and repair to some corner where she can wait until this thing tides over. For it serves no healthy and beneficial purpose for her to keep spewing the virus of politics while the lives of everyone are under threat from a savage viral disease.
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