In what is now becoming a habit, Rep. Eric Go Yap of ACT-CIS* party-list on Thursday disowned comments attributed to him about government critics using the valid issues raised by medical frontliners to make the Duterte administration look bad.
What he actually took issue with was a quote card on social media with him saying that medical workers were letting themselves be used to make the president look bad.
What he was really taking issue with, though, was that people on social media were criticizing him for what he said.
News reports from the previous day had him saying: "Nakakadismaya, dahil maraming gumagamit at nagpapagamit sa mga taong gustong pabagsakin ang gobyerno para sa pansariling interest lang nila."
(It is dismaying that there are those using (them) and those letting themselves be used by people who want to bring down the government for their own interests)
As in two other times that social media savaged him online for his comments, he walked it back and said "my statement that some individuals are taking advantage of issues faced by medical frontliners to topple the government was twisted."
I could not find the original source statement that media picked up the day before but found a radio interview from this week that was not reported and maybe should have been.
Here's a portion of his August 3 interview on Tutok Erwin Tulfo 2.0** that is too long to translate:
Isingit ko lang yung panawagan, sir, sa mga gustong sumira sa gobyerno, baka naman po puwede magpahinga muna tapusin lang nating yung COVID. Kasi nakikita natin yun sir, ginagamit na nila, dito po ako natatakot ginagamit na ng mga kalaban ng gobyerno yung mga LP (Liberal Party) yung mga frontliners natin.
Yung mga doktor na isang grupo lang, pinagsalita nila, ay ngayon dumadami na, ginagawa nila, pinalalabas nila kaaway ng presidente ang frontliners, mali po kayo.
LP, makinig po kayo: Ang presidente po ginagawa ang lahat at siya nagsabi mabigyan ng hazard pay lahat ng mga frontliners.
At ito nakakatakot, Sir Erwin, pati mga artista nakikisawsaw, tulad ni Angel Locsin, nakikisali rin. Parang walang tamang ginawa ang gobyerno. Ang sinasabi ng presidente, simple lang: Ang kalaban natin ngayon ay COVID-19. Tutukan po natin ang COVID-19.
Ngayon po, para po sa mga artista, para po sa mga Liberal Party, antayin po natin ang election season bago natin siraan ang presidente kung gusto natin.
Aside from being an elected member of Congress who sounds like a Facebook comment, Yap, as many in the administration do, conflates comment on and criticism of the government as wanting to bring it down.
That to be dissatisfied is the same as hating the country.
Worse, he invalidates these when they come from celebrities even though they do not actually live in their TV and movie worlds but in, as we say now, a society.
RELATED: AKTOR - League of Filipino Actors tribute to frontliners (on Facebook)
Media was quick to carry Yap's "clarification", which he issued Thursday afternoon.
As always, in the spirit of fairness and neutrality, and, as sometimes, against its own interest.
Inquirer columnist John Nery points out in a story I wrote in July that the 'I was misquoted' defense is a form of gaslighting, or psychological manipulation to make one doubt the reality they are in.
It also, Nery says, "plays into one of the main narratives the Duterte administration has propagated: That the mainstream media is hopelessly biased."
It can be argued, of course, that Yap was calling out a social media quote card. But that quote was sourced from news reports, with at least one outfit, Abante, going with that very headline.
Yap's narrative on medical frontliners is just part of a bigger one from earlier in the week when President Rodrigo Duterte conflatied a plea from the medical community for stricter quarantine protocols and a much needed review of pandemic response with a call for revolution.
"So kami dito, hindi namin kayo kinakalimutan. There would not have been no need for you to go into a — itong ganito. And raising your hands as if sabihin ninyo revolution, revolution," the official transcript has Duterte saying late Sunday night in comments clearly directed at health workers.
He would have preferred, the president said, for the doctors to have written him a letter or set an appointment instead of, in essence, making him seem a fool.***
But there was no call for a revolution or anything remotely close to it, as the Philippine College of Physicians made clear in a letter on Monday.
It turns out that they did write the Department of Health about their concerns in April, but those concerns were left unaddressed.
"If we just knew that your office was not briefed in detail about the situation of our workers in both government and private hospitals, we would have sought a private audience with you to settle these issues and made things clear and right," the doctors said as the PCP apologized that the president took their suggestions badly.
That a group of doctors, who describe themselves in the letter as "reserved in nature", has to pussyfoot around the president’s feelings is understandable.
Less so is how we have — again — done the same in reporting around the tirade.
The Palace, the next day, explained away the rant as the president's irritation at a number of things: Criticism from Vice President Leni Robredo, that the doctors made their call over an online press conference, and a Filipino translation of "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from "Les Miserables".
Granted part of "Les Miserables" happens during the Paris Uprising — not even the French Revolution and this one failed — none of the things that Roque mentioned points at any sort of call for a revolution.
Not the call for regular testing for medical workers nor the call for better transportation option.
And yet we reported the next day that "Roque clarified that Duterte's remark about launching a revolution was directed at critics who sang the protest song and was distinct from his message to frontliners."
This distinction was not apparent during the Sunday address nor the transcript of it.
Neither was it apparent to the doctors who felt they had to issue a clarificatory letter precisely because they understood the comments to have been directed at them.
And so we find ourselves days later writing about the narrative that goverment critics — who are they? — supposedly using medical workers — how? — to make the president look bad.
We find ourselves picking up these narratives for fairness and to be neutral. But how neutral an act, is it really, to forward the government narrative at face value?
*Which might as well be the name for a party-list for performative heteronormativity
** It is still the same Erwin Tulfo and not, unfortunately, an android
*** The president said they should not have “demeaned government”, but he is the government, or at least thinks of himself as the government. Why else refer to the uniformed services as “my police” and “my soldiers”?
**** I have been over recent months been moderating, rather badly, webinars for the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines. I flail through them with nothing but enthusiasm and am saved by the fact that the guests have substantial things today.
This morning's chat was about the Anti-Terrorism Law and we had Rappler Managing Editor Glenda Gloria and UP Fine Arts professor Lisa Ito, also secretary-general of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines, talk about it and the petitions filed against it at the Supreme Court.
Here's the link in case you want to check it out. Like and subscribe etc etc.