Governance

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

• The government has enough funds to pay for the vaccines needed to achieve herd immunity within 2021. At the Senate inquiry conducted on June 15 on the ₱82.5-B funds allocated for the procurement of vaccines under Bayanihan 2, it was disclosed that the government has more than enough funds to achieve herd immunity at least for this year. Senator Panfilo Lacson cited figures from Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III indicating that the government has ₱5 billion more than needed for achieving herd immunity in 2021. During the hearing, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said that the Philippines will get 68 million free doses, including 44 million from the COVAX facility and 24 million from two brands. As such, Lacson noted the government would need to pay only for 49 million doses to achieve herd immunity. The problem, however, is the delayed delivery of the vaccines and the slow and inefficient vaccination roll-out.

• The Department of Health (DOH) on June 9 said the Philippines is expected to receive 10 million vaccines every month by the third quarter of 2021. The statement came after several local government units complained of running out of COVID-19 jabs days after the Philippines began inoculating workers from essential sectors.

• The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) commended the Metro Manila LGUs for the fast roll-out and deployment of the vaccination program in their respective LGU hospitals leading to increased demand among medical frontliners in March. DILG Officer in Charge, Usec. Bernardo Florece Jr., said that “a few days since the vaccination program began, we have seen a significant increase in vaccine confidence among health care workers with some hospitals even running out of stocks.”

• Local government units (LGUs) have continuously intensified their preparations in anticipation of the arrival of more COVID-19 vaccines in the country in June. As part of the preparation for the vaccination monitoring system, DILG Secretary Año disclosed that the LGUs have ensured that there are enough vaccination centers, cold chain storage, and transportation to ferry the COVID-19 vials to their respective destinations.

Value of Human Work

• More COVID-19 vaccine supplies arrived in the Philippines starting in June and will help ramp up the country’s vaccination drive. Many of these vaccines are coming from Western manufacturers that are the more preferred brands such as British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca (two million doses), Pfizer (two million doses), both via the COVAX facility. Philippine Ambassador to the United States Romualdez has been coordinating with vaccine czar Carlito Galvez to get five million more one-shot doses from US drugmaker Johnson & Johnson to reach people in the rural areas. Around 250,000 initial doses from US firm Moderna also arrived in June.

People Empowerment

• Eight senators from different political parties condemned as “deplorable” the linking of community pantry initiatives across the country to the communist movement. The senators said “the profiling of the community pantry organizers should stop, citing how “notorious” several police and military officers have become in accusing progressives and civic leaders of having links with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).”

• Showing its support to community pantries, the DILG OIC-Regional Director (RD) Araceli San Jose of the Cordillera Region issued guidelines on how LGUs are to deal with community pantries. OIC-RD San Jose said that LGUs should not discourage the operation of community pantries, but rather support, promote, and ensure that in all their interactions with Community Pantry operators, donors, and those receiving or intending to receive aid from the same, all of their rights are respected and protected,” Furthermore, privately operated community pantries should not be subject to the requirements of LGU permits.

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

• Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said on May 24 that there is no assurance that the Philippines will achieve herd immunity by the end of the year, even if the government attains its target of vaccinating half a million people every day. Vergeire said herd immunity is the long-term goal, but the current focus is protecting the most vulnerable sectors as soon as possible in order to reduce severe infections, reduce hospitalizations, and reduce deaths. Herd immunity will be achieved when at least 70% of the population have been vaccinated. Vergeire explained in previous briefings that herd immunity cannot be guaranteed yet due to tight vaccine supply. The Health Department said the government aims to inoculate half a million people every day to reach the goal of 70 million vaccinated persons by the end of 2021. The country has been averaging only 162,513 daily vaccinations as of May 22.

Data as of June 6, 2021 showed that 5.95 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered, with 4.4 million of them as first doses. A total of 1.54 million Filipinos are fully vaccinated. The average number of doses administered per day in the last seven days is 112,621 (lower than the average reported as of May 22), with an average of 937 active and reporting vaccination sites.

• In mid-June, some vaccination sites around Metro Manila were temporarily closed after vaccine supplies ran out. Vaccination chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. apologized to local governments on June 9 and promised that Metro Manila would get its fresh allocation starting June 14 as millions of new doses were expected to arrive before then. Galvez explained that supply in the National Capital Region (NCR) ran low because 80% of the one million Sinovac doses shipped in early June went to areas outside the so-called “NCR Plus 8”, which comprises Metro Manila and eight adjacent or highly urbanized provinces.

• Metro Manila experienced a “serious surge” in COVID-19 cases starting in March this year, with the daily number of infections rising to as high as over 9,000 cases in May. The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases thus prioritized the NCR in the distribution of vaccine supplies in response to the surge. However, there were areas in the country that also experienced a fast increase in COVID-19 cases which had not been prioritized to receive vaccine supplies. The national organization of city mayors appealed to the national government to include more areas as priority recipients of COVID-19 vaccines following a surge in cases in localities outside the NCR. The new high-risk areas were Batangas and Pampanga, and some parts of Cagayan Region and Cordillera Administrative Region. Mimaropa and Western Visayas regions, including the cities of Calapan, Bacolod, and Iloilo, have also been reporting surges. Characterizing the government’s vaccination roll-out as “reactionary” Cagayan de Oro Representative Rufus Rodriguez slammed the lack of urgency in the response of vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. and other members of the IATF to their plea to increase the supply of doses in Cagayan de Oro. Testing czar Vince Dizon, for his part, explained that the government did not intend to neglect any area but the local leaders must understand that there is still a scarcity of vaccines.

• Reacting to a perceived trend of vaccine brand preference among the public as more vaccine brands came into the country in May, the DILG directed LGUs to refrain from announcing the brand of vaccines to be used in a particular vaccination center and disclose them only when the beneficiaries are on-site. The announcement triggered concerns that the policy could be in violation of the people’s right to know about matters that can impact their health, and could even discourage people, especially those with health issues, from going for vaccination. The government could have focused instead on intensifying its information and education campaign to counter brand preference.

• Lack of consultation with local officials in deciding health and safety protocols have given rise to debates carried on in public that caused confusion over adherence to certain protocols. In one case, the mandatory use of face shields outdoors has been questioned by one Metro Manila mayor and has since then spurred different interpretations of what is the protocol in force. On June 18, Senate President Vicente Sotto III expressed displeasure at the DOH, accusing the agency of defying President Duterte’s order to have face shields worn only in hospitals. Sotto said Duterte, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, and testing czar Vince Dizon were all in agreement on easing the requirements on the use of face shields by the general public. However, on June 21, the President issued a directive requiring the wearing of face shields both indoor and outdoor.

In another case, Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia said at a June 21 press conference that personnel in charge of processing returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) must follow the local protocols and ignore quarantine and swab testing rules of the national government’s COVID-19 task force. Reiterating her stance to follow the provincial ordinance which set forth the protocols, she reasoned that “We are a government of laws, not of men. And so it is not about someone saying that the provincial ordinance is null and void because it goes against a particular resolution issued by IATF.” However, after President Rodrigo Duterte insisted that Cebu follow national protocols, Governor Gwendolyn Garcia said the following day that she was “setting aside” her contentious executive order (EO) on the province's custom protocols on overseas Filipino workers (OFW) and returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs).

• The president threatened to arrest those who refuse to be vaccinated even as Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra clarified that refusing vaccination was not against the law. Such a statement by the president could confuse and mislead people about their rights and lawful choices. It did not help that presidential legal adviser Salvador Panelo contradicted Guevarra’s statement by saying that no new law is required to arrest those who refuse to be vaccinated since the Constitution, in Article II, Section 15, declares that the state must "protect and promote the right to health of the people." Aside from Guevarra, another Cabinet member, Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque had earlier commented that while there is legal basis for Duterte's arrest order in Philippine jurisprudence, Congress still needs to pass a law making vaccine refusal a crime or making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory.

The president’s threat is also quite absurd given that more Filipinos want to be vaccinated than the amount of vaccine supplies being made available. The shortage of vaccine supplies has stemmed from the delay in their procurement because the government belatedly realized the need for an indemnification agreement between the government and vaccine supplier companies. The absence of a law providing for an indemnity fund had caused the delay in the shipment of the first batch of 117, 000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine from the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) facility, The shipment was supposed to arrive on February 12. Moreover, a month after he signed into law the provision of indemnity and creation of an indemnification fund, a confused president declared on March 22 that “The government cannot guarantee, much less give you an immune status that you are freed of any and all liability. It's too much. I think we cannot even do that even if we wanted to, assuming liability for the stuff bought by the provinces – tell them it cannot be."

• Philippine healthcare facilities are under “severe financial distress” as the state health insurer PhilHealth has failed to fully reimburse them for millions worth of coronavirus treatments since March 2020. Private Hospital Association (PHA) president Dr. Jaime Almora said PhilHealth – which is facing multiple allegations of corruption – was allegedly prioritizing the reimbursements for the expenses of non-COVID-19 patients over those who were infected with the virus. The PHA earlier said PhilHealth has unsettled debts to its member hospitals amounting to P6 billion worth of claims. This has forced them to reduce manpower and other resources, thereby drastically reducing the health care capacity amid the surge in COVID-19 infections in the country.

• While the government continues to rely on threatening Filipinos to force compliance with health protocols, the government has been negligent in implementing the most critical measures, such as testing and contact-tracing, to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 infections. In March, the government was only averaging 45,000 tests a day, a far cry from its target of 90,000. A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, contact tracing in the Philippines is "deteriorating" in various regions, according to Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong, the country's tracing czar. On the national average, comparing the time periods of February 28 to March 14, and March 15 to March 29, the contact tracing ratio fell from 1:7 to 1:3. Magalong explained that for many areas in the country, contact tracing does not go beyond the household of the detected COVID-19 case.

• As much as a fourth of the funds allocated for the country's pandemic stimulus measures remains unspent more than a year into the COVID-19 outbreak, leaving ₱173.31 billion still unused. According to Assistant Budget Secretary Kim de Leon, the delay in disbursing the funds could be due to implementation issues. Among the major initiatives funded by the Bayanihan laws are the emergency employment of health workers, purchases of additional face masks and other protective gear, capital for additional retail loans, cash-for-work assistance, cash aid, and additional COVID-19 testing kits and equipment. The timely spending on these could have greatly helped in alleviating the financial hardships of workers who lost their jobs and the shortage of health workers, as well as boosted testing capacity. But since the president did not call for a special session to extend the validity of Bayanihan 2, some ₱9 billion in unspent funds intended for the risk allowance of health workers and free rides to commuters can no longer be used after June 30.

People Empowerment

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

• Refusing to submit itself to the rule of law, the Philippine government declared that it will never cooperate on the investigation to be conducted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the drug-related killings committed in the context of the Duterte administration’s anti-illegal drug campaign. It reasoned that the ICC Prosecutor has no jurisdiction over these cases since the Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019. Presidential spokesperson Roque said that the government will not allow the ICC to substitute for domestic courts and that the country's legal system is independent, impartial, and competent. However, except for the Kian de los Santos’ case, there has been no progress in the investigation and prosecution of police-perpetrated killings in connection with the anti-illegal drugs campaign.

• President Duterte announced that he was considering the arming of PNP civilian volunteers to help in the government’s anti-crime campaign. On June 25, the commander-in-chief said “If you have this coalition, you have a list of people who are there who can arm themselves. I will order the police if you are qualified, get a gun, and help us enforce the laws”.

Lawmakers and human rights advocates have warned that such a move could give rise to the proliferation of arms and emergence of more vigilante groups, and thereby result in a rise, instead of a decline, in criminality. This is not the first time that the president broached this idea. In 2018, Duterte had said he was considering providing free guns to the public as long as they would fight drugs and crime. In 2017, he expressed a similar stance in a speech made in Bohol after Abu Sayyaf men were seen on the island. This latest announcement by the president betrays his tendency to rely on force and violence in curbing criminality, instead of attacking its root causes, among them the slowness and corruption of the justice system. If this becomes public policy, it will add to the danger of propagating among law enforcers and the public a culture of impunity and a low regard for human life and dignity.

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

• Philippine officials have stood up against China’s continuing incursions in the WPS. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. issued strongly worded statements and filed diplomatic protests, demanding that the Chinese militia boats moored near Julian Felipe Reef in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) leave the area. China claims that the vessels are just fishing vessels, but the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS) doubts this and believes that the boats are actually maritime militia vessels. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) filed diplomatic protests over Beijing’s new law allowing its coastguards to fire upon foreign vessels on Chinese-claimed reefs in the South China Sea.

Love of Preference for the Poor

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

• Government officials have been issuing conflicting statements on Philippine claims to reefs in the WPS. In a press release of the National Task Force on the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS), the task force maintained that the Julian Felipe Reef is part of Philippine territory, contrary to the claims made by presidential spokesperson Harry Roque that the feature is outside the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Foreign Affairs Secretary Locsin chided the NTF-WPS for issuing a statement without informing the DFA, but he ordered the DFA to file a diplomatic protest over the presence of militia boats near the reefs.

• President Duterte’s statements on the WPS have sown division and discord among Filipinos on the issue. By belittling the arbitral ruling that nullified China’s claims in the South China Sea as a “mere scrap of paper”, Duterte virtually acknowledged China’s possession of islands within the Philippines’ EEZ. This spurred groups of lawyers and former military officers to call on the President to retract his statements as these could be construed as an official position, thereby jeopardizing the country’s claims of sovereign rights to features within the country’s EEZ. By repeatedly making such statements, the President has appeared to affirm China’s position on its alleged “possession” of territories claimed by the Philippines while blaming fellow Filipinos and officials of the previous administration for such possession. The Philippine government has failed to take a long-term and consistent policy on its territorial conflicts with China and instead of consulting local experts on the issue, the president has refused to convene the National Security Council to weigh in on the problem.

• After the Philippine government sounded the alarm in March over the presence of more than 200 Chinese ships anchored on Julian Felipe (Whitsun) Reef, where Pagkakaisa Banks is located, the number of ships inside Philippine EEZ increased from 129 to 238, or by more than 100 ships, from middle of May to June 17, according to the US-based satellite technology firm, Simularity. That China has continued to ignore the protests coming from the Philippine government only shows the weakness and ineffectiveness of the Philippines’ actions towards China in the face of the latter’s determined maritime aggression in the WPS. Analysts have commented that the Philippines has failed to take advantage of its alliances with other countries, particularly the United States, in dealing with its territorial disputes with China.

Love of Preference for the Poor

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

People Empowerment

Integral Development Based on Human Dignity and Solidarity

• The Philippines has been included in a global dirty money watchdog’s “grey list” of countries that will be subjected to increased monitoring to prove its progress against money-laundering and terrorist financing. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released on June 25 its grey list, or jurisdictions that will be under increased monitoring and actively working to “address strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing.”

Republic Act No. 11521 which tightened the country’s Anti-Money Laundering Law was legislated into law on January 29 this year, only days ahead of the February 1 deadline set by the FATF for the country to show tangible progress that it has imposed tighter Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing (AML/CTF) measures. The law included new covered persons such as real estate brokers and developers following earlier findings that some dirty money proceeds went into the industry.

The FATF first blacklisted the country as a “non-cooperating country or territory” in 2000 before it started releasing a “grey list” in 2012. After the creation of the AMLC through the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001, or Republic Act No. 9160, the country was delisted in 2005. It was again warned it would be blacklisted in 2012, but dodged being included after Congress passed RA No. 10168 or the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012. Possible negative consequences of the country’s being placed on the “grey list” include the threat of making remittances more difficult for OFWs and the disincentive to investing in the country.