“I will not hesitate.

My orders are to the police and military, as well as village officials, if

there is any trouble, or occasions where there’s violence and your lives are in danger:
shoot them dead.” – President Duterte
The global crisis is first and foremost a public health issue but the militarized nature
imposed by President Duterte’s administration has failed to appreciate the critical public
health and human security dimensions of the pandemic. What is worse, instead of
minimizing the overall burden that the virus unleashed in the country, it seems the last
resort lockdown itself added to a plethora of problems without adequately addressing
the primary crisis at hand: ensuring public health and safety.
On April 1, 2020, twenty-one of the hungry protesters from Sitio San Roque were
beaten and arrested by the police. Duterte quoted them as “pasaways” where in fact
those are the poverty-stricken community, like many others, who demand for food and
had found it near impossible to deal with having no livelihood. Arrests have also
extended to anyone caught criticizing the administration’s perceived failures during the
pandemic and even people posting unflattering opinions about Duterte online. The
biggest single haul of the crackdown came on Labor Day, May 1. Ninety-two individuals
across five cities were imprisoned while either engaging in feeding programs or joining
online protests. 
What makes the Philippine government one of the worst examples of handling the
pandemic is its government official’s incompetence married with militarism threaded
throughout its responses. Using the pandemic as a reason for increasingly flexing
authoritarian power and heavy-handed-punitive-approach spells danger for Filipinos.
Aptly enough, the happenings in the Animal Farm is an eye-opener to the masses not to
remain neutral and silent especially if the people in power get manipulative by abusing
it for personal gain and how they try to control the people to remain in power.