"Responsible citizenship, effective governance"
"Responsible citizenship, effective governance"
I am writing this article from my hotel quarantine room in Taipei on a Saturday afternoon. I thought of writing earlier than the usual Sunday morning, worried as almost everyone back home is about the oncoming typhoon named Goni here, and Rolly (as in GSIS President Macasaet) by our PAGASA.
Right now, it’s all sunny in the capital region, eerily similar to the day before and even the morning before Ondoy poured torrents of rain within a few hours that cost so many lives and stranded hundreds of thousands on impassably flooded streets.
Having nothing much to do while on the mandatory 14-day quarantine for all returning residents and visitors to this island, I have been monitoring all kinds of weather forecasts from international to local. And all I can hope for is “huwag naman sana,” if we go by the worst predictions, which is rain as heavy as Ondoy and winds similar in strength to Yolanda.
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Meanwhile, Taiwan last Thursday marked the 200th day of no community transmission of the COVID-19. This the entire community achieved without any lockdowns, no wholesale testing, just efficient contact tracing and people following rules and advisories from government. Indeed, it is something to emulate.
Each morning, I get a text message from the Central Epidemic Command Center asking about my health condition, to which I reply through a simple numerical code whether I feel normal, developed any of the usual COVID-19 symptoms, or have other symptoms of illness. Every now and then, a reassuring voice calls to ask if everything is all right.
And each time the hotel sends breakfast and dinner to my doorstep, I get a message asking me to please check my body temperature through a provided oral thermometer and report the same. As I peer through my room’s balcony to the street below, there is a ubiquitous police patrol car, probably to ensure that none of the quarantined hotel residents can venture out of their rooms, as had happened in the early days of the coronavirus restrictions.
Donald Trump with his Boogaloo and Proud Boys should take a leaf from what Taiwan has achieved, even as the system is as free and democratic compared to regimented systems where rules are easier followed, or else.
It is really all about responsible citizenship and effective governance.
**
I read about the House Appropriations chair threatening some notoriously “corrupt-ridden” agencies a budget cut, if they do not reform.
“Why should we give them a budget?” asks Rep. Eric Yap.
Some Bureau of Customs personnel would just snicker, and retort: Who cares about our budget, or our salaries? Nasa Customs na, kailangan pa ang sweldo?
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An article in the New York Times (not Trump’s favorite New York Post which hardly anyone in Manhattan reads) last October 27 is worrisome.
It reports an awesome increase in gun sales from March till September of this year — 15.1 million guns were purchased, representing a 91-percent increase compared to the same period in 2019.
Many gun buyers are saying that they are motivated by a new destabilizing sense, pushing them to buy guns for self-defense, and for those who already possess guns to want to buy more. For the latter, the prospects of a Democratic Party win could mean stricter gun controls, while for the former, it is the anxiety of what could happen after the November 3 elections.
Will the far-right extremists that Donald Trump coddles do mayhem on E-Day, or during the canvassing, which may take longer due to voting by mail, heavier in this election on account of fears of COVID contagion? Will the Donald concede if he loses, or will he irresponsibly hold on and incite America, so deeply divided as it already is, to a discombobulating regime of street protests and racial violence?
If something like those worst-case scenarios should happen, the repercussions will affect not only our Fil-Am kababayans and relatives, but will have dire international repercussions, including security threats in our part of the world.
Again, huwag naman sana.
Come November 3 (Nov. 4 here), millions across the globe will watch what happens in the “land of the free and home of the brave.”
Eyes are on the battleground states where the contest is still quite close — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, that tropical southern state of the US of A where George W. Bush finally won over Al Gore in 2000 by a scant margin of 537 votes after a long and litigated process of canvass, giving him all of the state’s 29 electoral votes.
Recall likewise that Hillary Clinton, like Al Gore, won the popular vote, but lost in the electoral college just four years ago.
If Biden wins over Trump, it should be by a decisive margin in both the popular vote and the College of Electors, for otherwise, who knows what cataclysmic insanity could possibly grip the presently most powerful nation on earth?