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Friday, March 29, 2024

Dropping the ball

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"On Duque’s seeming immunity from presidential discipline"

Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. made clear on Twitter that in his view, “someone dropped the ball” on a deal with US pharmaceutical company Pfizer that would have shipped 10 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines by January 2021.

Although he mentioned no names, It didn’t take very long for the public to realize that he was talking about Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.

Senator Panfilo Lacson, who has no love lost for the Health secretary, soon confirmed that Locsin was referring to Duque.

Lacson said the country could have secured the delivery of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine were it not for Duque’s failure to work swiftly on a documentary requirement—the signing of a confidentiality disclosure agreement that he was asked to review on Sept. 24, but signed almost a month later, on Oct. 20.

Referring to Duque’s seeming immunity from presidential discipline, Lacson said “the captain ball” always messes up but stays in power because “the coach refuses to replace him.

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“The more important question is, how many lives would be saved between January and when (if at all) the vaccines may be made available again to Filipinos,” said Lacson, who has repeatedly called for Duque to be fired over lapses in the country’s COVID-19 response.

Duque denies he dropped the ball, saying he meticulously reviewed the papers and even sought help from legal experts to make sure there were no onerous provisions in the agreement. When the review was complete, he signed the document.

Curiously, the country’s vaccine czar, Carlito Galvez Jr., also denied that any deal had been bungled.

Galvez said the claim that the Philippines could have immediately secured 10 million doses was “impossible,” as Pfizer was granted emergency use authorization for its vaccine on Dec. 11. He added that the richest countries have already bought some 80 percent of the available vaccines from Pfizer.

In the wake of this public bickering, the Palace said it saw no major lapse as negotiations with Pfizer are ongoing.

The President’s spokesman said the contradicting statements among Cabinet officials—Locsin and Duque—would not affect the country’s purchase of vaccines.

“These conflicting opinions between Secretary Locsin and Secretary Duque in the end, does (sic) not really matter because it’s Secretary Galvez who has the full authority and he will be fully accountable to the President,” said presidential spokesman Harry Roque.

Here we beg to differ.

If there were, in fact, a deal in place to get the Pfizer vaccine early, and the lack of urgency on Duque’s part torpedoed the shipment, we need to know about it—and the President ought to take action.

On the other hand, if Galvez’s statement is accurate and it would have been impossible to get January delivery of 10 million doses, we need to know why the Foreign secretary and the Philippine ambassador to Washington would have made such an outlandish claim.

Finally, we need to know why, if Galvez is the official responsible for vaccine procurement, negotiations initiated by the Foreign secretary were not better coordinated through his office.

It is facile to say we should move on and paper over these perplexing questions. But if these issues remain unsettled, they are bound to resurface, and, as Lacson observes, lives are at stake.

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