‘The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’

WE can understand why Pres. Duterte, despite the surge anew in the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the national capital and neighboring regions, is hesitant to re-impose a total lockdown.

Simply put, our economy may no longer be able to “take it,” so to speak.

Nearly four months of total lockdown has seen the lives of thousands of Filipinos devastated with factories idle and hardly any commerce functioning as people are confined to their homes, at least the majority who are suffering who have a roof over their heads.

Indeed, this war against an unseen enemy, the COVID-19 virus, has caused damage nearly equivalent to an actual struggle against a foreign aggressor.

The government’s primary consideration of course in resorting to such harsh measure is to “save lives,” not an easy task considering our inadequacies in almost everything made more glaring by the dependent nature of our economy to the global economic chain.

In other words, this pandemic has shown to us the ugly truth no matter how we deny it: Since the founding of our Republic more than 200 years ago, we are, and continues to be, a poor and backward country, totally dependent on outside forces for our sustenance. There lies the accumulated wastes of our past mistakes of our governments and us as a people.

Further complicating our situation is the presence of the political opposition who simply does not care whether the pandemic is bringing the entire country down in the promotion of their self-serving agenda.

And they have plenty of reasons to gloat over considering how the totality of the government effort to fight COVID-19 has been nicely misguided by our top health official.

And yes, there is the common trait that has corrupted the Filipino character after the coming of foreign aggressors: the “sarili ko muna, kanya-kanya” attitude resulting to our utter lack of national discipline in the achievement of a goal, which is, to save people’s lives. And next to this, the paving of the road to national recovery even as the pandemic rages.

Thus, the government, it would seem, is nicely caught between the proverbial “devil and the deep blue sea.”

In a “zero sum game” where locking down again the center of the country’s business and economic activity to protect the public from the virus needs to be balanced by the need to stir up the economy back into life.

This, indeed, is a dilemma.