The detrimental effects of COVID-19 have been prevalent globally however, it is also observed to be contributing to the continuing democratic backslide in the Philippines. Through the guise of saving human lives, President Rodrigo Duterte dramatically expanded his executive as well as policing powers (Edgell 2021). Despite the enforcement of strict face masks and social distancing measures, the Philippines still ranks fourth on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Cases have surpassed a total of 2,837,903 as of January 2022 and reached 51,373 deaths, although the transparency of the data provided by the Department of Health (DOH) is criticized. In addition to this, last year several experts from the Citizens’ Urgent Response to End COVID-19 (CURE COVID) highlighted the serious weaknesses in the governments maneuvers during the COVID crises which resulted in an increase in infections amongst those living in poverty during their media briefing (Maru 2020).
One of the first responses of the government was the establishment of the Inter-Agency Taskforce on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) which serves as the primary policy-making and executive body for COVID-19 and is comprised of former generals who have become cabinet members. (Makabenta 2020) described the IATF-EID as “the oddest task force to combat the pandemic, a squad full of soldiers without a single epidemiologist” in one of his journals. Furthermore, the mandatory lockdowns were concentrated in locations of high population density, commonly populated by the poor people living in urban areas (Hapal 2021). The situation deteriorated further when the government failed to allocate and distribute sufficient funds to the Social Amelioration Program (SAP), a program designed to aid those in poverty during the quarantine process of COVID-19. Essentially, due to the ineffectiveness of the initial strategies, the Philippine government shifted its approach to the pandemic to tactics centered on containment and harsh law enforcement methods. This was explicit when residents of Sitio San Roque (“San Roque 21”), Quezon City, for example, who gathered alongside Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) on April 1, 2020, after hearing that relief goods would be distributed, were among those detained. Several political analysts have compared President Duterte’s methods to combat the corona virus as ‘militarized or ‘police-centric” (Maru 2020).
There are a plethora of other examples of further democratic erosion as seen with the violation of Article 7 by participating in torture through means of public humiliation and forced confinement within coffins and dog cages (HRW 2021). Moreover, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 was passed, echoing draconian tendencies to which United Nations (UN) Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet expressed concern that “The recent passage of the new Anti-Terrorism Act heightens our concerns about the blurring of important distinctions between criticism, criminality and terrorism”. The militant nature as a response to the pandemic combined with mobility restrictions as well as the infringement on freedom of press has had a polarizing effect on Filipino society. President Duterte’s six-year term has instilled a “us vs. them” mentality in the country’s society by intertwining populist messages with ambiguous labels like “communists,” “oligarchs,” and “biased media.”(Pangalangan 2022). This polarizing method is expected to be utilized by the President again in the next presidential elections of 2022 which is already occurring as declared by VERA Files Fact Check, a non-profit news organization which stated that more than a third of trending online posts were false news related to the future election. Much of the discredited news revolved around content which supported former President Bongbong Marcos or altered facts about his family, origins and crimes committed under his father’s administration. Hence, with the growing popularity and use of social media, the atmosphere of political polarization has transferred to the digital realm rather than the streets. The swift clean-up of all social media platforms particularly Twitter and Facebook must be emphasized in order for the public to come to their own opinions and judgements regarding the current governments administration.
Nevertheless, the upcoming elections in May 2022 could be a watershed moment for democracy in the Philippines if the country can band together with the help of non-governmental organizations to address the country’s ongoing issues with press freedom, as misinformation on social media has played a significant role in polarizing, distracting, and misleading Filipino voters. (Pangalangan 2022). To avoid further deterioration into authoritarianism, Filipino society must engage in critical thinking in order to distinguish between fake news and reality, as well as support and participate in various civil societies to invoke change and cease anymore backsliding in democracy.
References
- ABS-CBN News, and ABS-CBN News Davinci Maru. “’F As in Falfak’: Ph Gov’t Gets Failing Marks in Covid-19 Response from These Experts.” ABS, ABS-CBN News, 22 July 2020, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/07/22/20/f-as-in-falfak-ph-govt-gets-failing-marks-in-covid-19-response-from-these-experts.
- ABS-CBN News, and ABS-CBN News Davinci Maru. “Philippines’ Coronavirus Cases Soar to 72,269 with 1,594 New Infections.” ABS, ABS-CBN News, 22 July 2020, https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/07/22/20/philippines-covid19-cases-coronavirus-update-july222020.
- August, Alexa, and Gelen Emil Turano. “About.” Democratic Erosion, 1 May 2021, https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2021/05/01/covid-19-and-how-it-aggravated-the-philippines-eroding-democracy/.
- Edgell, Amanda B, et al. “Pandemic Backsliding: Violations of Democratic Standards during Covid-19.” Social Science & Medicine (1982), The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd., Sept. 2021, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8417367/.
- Makabenta, Yen. “The World’s Longest Lockdown, Oddest Task Force vs Covid-19.” The Manila Times, The Manila Times, 21 May 2020, https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/05/21/opinion/columnists/topanalysis/the-worlds-longest-lockdown-oddest-task-force-vs-covid-19/726169/.
- Pangalangan, Paco. “2022: An Inflection Point for Our Democracy.” Philstar.com, Philstar.com, 1 Jan. 2022, https://www.philstar.com/news-commentary/2022/01/01/2151234/2022-inflection-point-our-democracy.
- “Southeast Asia COVID-19 Tracker.” Southeast Asia Covid-19 Tracker | Center for Strategic and International Studies, 9 Dec. 2021, https://www.csis.org/programs/southeast-asia-program/projects/southeast-asia-covid-19-tracker.
- Thelwell, Kim. “Social Amelioration Program (SAP).” The Borgen Project, Kim Thelwell Https://Borgenproject.org/Wp-Content/Uploads/The_Borgen_Project_Logo_small.Jpg, 3 June 2021, https://borgenproject.org/tag/social-amelioration-program-sap/.
- “World Report 2021: Rights Trends in Philippines.” Human Rights Watch, 13 Jan. 2021, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/philippines.
Uayan,
Your post highlights well why COVID has provided the opportunity for democratic backsliding to be initiated or accelerated. From an institutional perspective, you first mention that a lot of the actions taken by the Philippines government have been under “the guise of saving human lives.” The government has been able to consolidate power, make more use of paramilitary forces, establish more regulations and security measures, and create new government bodies all for the stated purpose of getting the country through a crisis. Of course, we have to be careful when labeling any of these individual actions as cases of democratic backsliding. This is an issue we face with modern democratic backsliding more generally, which can be masked by positive purposes, such as tackling election fraud, establishing stability, and adhering to the rule of law. This requires us to look deeper into these policies for things like underlying motivations, disproportionate effects, and the demographics of people running things. As you have shown, we can safely say that the COVID response in the Philippines is a case of democratic backsliding.
From a cultural perspective, you briefly mention how COVID has had a polarizing effect on Filipino society. I think this section deserved some more attention, as we have seen this become an important source of polarization in other countries, like the United States. What is the public attitude toward COVID, and how exactly has COVID further polarized the country? Although President Duterte has definitely taken advantage of COVID to exercise and consolidate more power, I wonder if dissatisfaction with his response will contribute to the opposition’s mobilization. As you point out, COVID and the government’s response have disproportionately hurt the poorer populations of the country. Do these groups have enough political sway to challenge President Duterte in the upcoming election?
This blog has mentioned several instances that are demonstrative of democratic backsliding in the Philippine society which was further manifested and aggravated when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country. Despite long history of being a democratic country, it has not been spared from the perils of democratic erosion majorly driven by authoritarian-like practices and amplified reliance of the Duterte administration to the military, which has become more apparent when he gave the military the authority to take charge in the country’s COVID-19 responses.
The Philippines was unprepared with the pandemic and its impacts. The government’s response to the pandemic was experimental especially during its early stages. It resulted to the imposition of vague, conflicting, and inconsistent policies intended to contain the virus, but also caused confusion among the people and even to implementing authorities. The increased reliance of the Duterte administration to the military and the authority he gave to them to handle the pandemic and the implementation of policies despite public confusion, had made the Filipino society more vulnerable to abuses of power, just like the arbitrary arrests and detention of people mentioned in the blog.
The mobility restrictions, limited access to government systems and processes, and the dependence of the public to government responses and decisions in confronting the pandemic made the Philippines more vulnerable to democratic backsliding as it deteriorated the capacity of the people and institutions to monitor and scrutinize the workings of the government.
Duterte’s utilization of the military in his favor, especially during the pandemic, highly contributed in his success to achieve a high degree of authority to either assemble or dismantle mechanisms and institutions to keep him in power to pursue his interests.
The author does a thorough job of explaining how the Philippine government was capable of successfully navigating the country through the COVID-19 pandemic through the utilization of undemocratic practices that display a case of modern day democratic backsliding. Under the leadership of President Duterte, the government wielded armed troops and adopted additional safety precautions to combat the effects of the pandemic. With regard to the epidemic and its effects, the Nation was unready. In particular during the initial phases of the outbreak, the government’s approach was unconventional. In order to halt the spread of infection, it led to establishment of hazy, contradictory, and irregular regulations, which produced uncertainty throughout the nation’s populace as well as within the policies of the country’s administration. Thus, Duterte established that military forces and increased strict regulations would be necessary to handle the pandemic. However, these actions provided a gateway for undemocratic actions to be engaged such as unjust abuses of authority and placed the general public at the hands of those in charge. Overall, Duterte used the pandemic to stretch his authority over more areas which evidently hurt the the more indigent groups of the public. The question remains whether the nation will continue to support their leader and his practices or advocate for change in future elections.
Hello Uuyan, great discussion on how the pandemic became an opportunity for then-President Rodrigo Duterte to accelerate democratic backsliding. Having lived through the former president’s pandemic response, the discussion of how the Duterte administration used pandemic policies to restrict democratic and peaceful means of dissent resonated with me. Your discussion of the administration adopting a “war logic” in managing the pandemic was insightful. This war logic informing the pandemic response resulted in treating the pandemic as if it was a traditional war.
The primary goal and subsequent strategy were not to manage the pandemic, but it was to defeat the “enemy”–an entity that the government conceputalized as a the villain of the story.
The enemy was not the virus; it was the Filipino/Filipina body that was unable to religiously follow pandemic policy restrictions, labeling them as “undisciplined.” This legitimized state-sponsored violent responses against the undisciplined, often from the urban poor. A highlight of this was during the early period of the pandemic in April 2020 when a community in a city slum demanding food and aid were met with violence because they were not following health protocols.
The enemy was also the “activist” for demanding government to be transparent and accountable in spending public funds to respond to the pandemic.
The enemies were the nurses and scientists, who, if they chose to be critical of the government, would be gaslighted as ungrateful and “anti-government.”
The pandemic exposed the limits of the Philippine government to effectively govern a crisis. Instead of learning from this, the government doubled down and chose to blame the citizens for its weaknesses. The pandemic response highlighted how democratic erosion is not only harmful to institutions, but it also became a precursor to institutions harming people. It highlighted how democratic erosion had real life (sometimes, fatal) consequences.