FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., on Sunday predicted a change in geopolitics in Asia as rich countries that cornered the Covid-19 vaccines also failed to provide the jabs for poorer countries.
He said the pandemic would not be able to kill all the third world citizens, and those that will survive would take revenge on the rich.
“At UN I said Covid will kill a lot; more in poor countries. But it won’t erase them; they’ll survive. Covid will end. And those who were not helped will take it out on those who could have but did not; even as they will turn to those who helped. Geopolitics will change completely,” Locsin tweeted.
At the same time, he took a dig at officials, whom he did not identify, who dropped the ball in ordering the vaccine early on, as the country continues to lag in vaccinations, while the more transmissible Covid variants outpaced its speed.
The past two weeks have seen a steady rise in new daily infections, overwhelming medical care institutions and forcing many patients to seek treatment in provinces in southern and central Luzon. On advise of his health officials, President Duterte extended the enhanced community quarantine until April 11.
“Again this is no excuse for our failure. If those variants come here, Ramon, we’re dead. Nothing we can do about that except to hope and fervently pray that those who dribbled the saving ball die first in agony,” Locsin said on his Twitter account, exchanging tweets with netizen Ramon Ortol.
“No excuse Mr. Secretary, but the opposition should be more responsible. Instead of nitpicking the deficiencies of the government’s pandemic response they should be offering solutions and unite the public to cooperate for us to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic,” Ortol said.
Secretary Locsin rued the seeming lack of a moral obligation by rich countries who hoarded the Covid-19 vaccines in volumes surpassing their own populations.
“One year in and insofar as one can speak of a global vaccination drive it is non-Western. EU exports but largely to rich ‘Western’ countries. India and China supplying themselves, EM and Covax/LIC, he tweeted.
The DFA secretary was on a three-day trip to China when he learned of the death of Rey Enriquez, consular staff assigned to SM Sta. Mesa. Enriquez contracted Covid-19, but died without the aid of a ventilator, despite pleas for one on social media.
Enriquez, who was brought to one hospital after another, was eventually transferred to Cabanatuan, where he died.
“Cabanatuan? What happened to the tons of intubation equipment I formally received on behalf of Health? Where are they?” Locsin wanted to know.
He was told by the family that Enriquez choked for lack of a ventilator. “He died, choking. I recall that DFA received tons of breathing apparatus to turn over to the medical sector. Where are these apparatuses, when they are most desperately needed?” Locsin added.
In the early months of last year’s lockdown, Locsin had personally accepted donations of medical supplies and personal protective equipment from other countries, while working the diplomatic network for potential deals on vaccines.
Locsin said he talked to Rodriguez’s daughter, Rose, who told him her father “was so admired by his family for never stepping out of the straight & narrow of real public service.”
“Send someone to comfort the family with all the help a bureaucracy can extend to the best of its servants. I am so sorry and ashamed,” Locsin said.
Earlier, Enriquez family brought him to Dr. Romel Cruz Hospital in Matimbo.
“The hospital has no ventilators. He is struggling to breath. Someone please rush there with ventilator,” Enriquez’s family pleaded.
OFW advocate Susan “Toots” Ople told Locsin, also on Twitter: “DFA’s HRMO was very helpful, per Rey’s family. They are very grateful to DFAPHL The only hospital open to taking him in was in Cabanatuan City. The situation is just that dire. God help us all.”
Locsin accepted Ople’s suggestion, to “establish an internal hotline/email for DFA personnel in need of Covid related help. In partnership with the union. And can we start paying casuals who cannot work in a lockdown?”
Meanwhile, the three-time Makati congressman also mourned the loss of journalist Guiller de Guzman, who died of Covid on Sunday.
“He was my colleague in the publishing business in GLOBE & TODAY, pioneers in real journalism: elegant in the precision of facts and their presentation as news. He had a sharp and pitiless eye for grammatical howlers & idiomatic slips. He just died of Covid.”
“I don’t know what to say except if I had any plans to write about the past I had a hand in, those plans went up in smoke with Guiller’s passing.”
Guiller’s son tweeted Locsin. “I am Rod, his firstborn. When I was still young, I can still remember that you visited papa in our house when he got sick. “He used to tell us that you are an upright and respectable boss at Philippine Free Press. God bless!”
Image credits: AP/Sakchai Lalit
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