By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — Even for lowly jobs, Filipino are required to submit proofs of clean bill of health to show that they are fit. What more for the job of president of the Philippines?
In a press conference Saturday, leaders of organizations of doctors, nurses and health workers reported the result of their comprehensive examination of the Arroyo regime’s showing for the past eight to nine years.
Their diagnosis: the signs and symptoms exhibited by the Arroyo government “are consistent with a moribund condition of multiple organ failure.” Her regime is therefore not fit to rule.
Heartless
“Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is suffering from a serious heart ailment— she has lost her heart for the Filipino people,” said Eleanor A. Jara MD, executive director of Council for Health and Development. Under Arroyo, Jara said, health care delivery is at its worse. Budget for health is measly compared to the 92 million Filipinos. It translates to just P0.83 ($0.02) per person per day. Subsidies for indigent patients in specialty hospitals is only P6 million ($128,150), but for the “highly questionable wars and military spending” being overseen by the defense department, Arroyo has budgeted P56.5 billion.
Blind
“GMA is blind, or she chose to be blind, to the plight of patients and health workers,” said Emma Manuel, national president of Alliance of Health Workers. Throughout her nine years as president, GMA stalled and twisted the efforts of health workers and professionals to make health services more accessible and affordable.
“She prioritized foreign remittances and pushed nurses and doctors to work abroad,” said Manuel. Meanwhile, health workers who stayed on to serve Filipinos were further pushed into poverty with low salaries, “bigay-bawi” (give and take back) benefits, lack of union rights and inhumane working conditions.
Officers of the Health Alliance for Democracy say Arroyo regime is unfit. (Photo by Marya Salamat / bulatlat.com)
On top of being frontliners in facing rampant communicable diseases in public hospitals and community health centers, public health workers are also forced to deal with patients who are increasingly enraged and helpless at the rising cost of health services.
“We see clearly that President Arroyo is also a blind follower of her foreign masters, the US monopoly through the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization,” said Manuel. She ascribed to its dictated policies the Arroyo government’s drive to “corporatize” or privatize the remaining public hospitals. These are the reasons behind the increasingly expensive costs of health services.
Paranoid
A mental disorder, paranoia is characterized by unwarranted suspicion, hypersensitivity, excessive self-importance and tendency to blame and ascribe evil motives to others. According to Dr. Reginaldo Pamugas, secretary-general of Health Action for Human Rights, a non-government organization servicing victims of human rights violations, GMA’s chronic bouts of paranoia threaten the lives and human rights of every Filipino.
Since GMA took power on January 2001 to March 2009, more than a thousand have been extra-judicially killed, 202 have been abducted, millions displaced especially in Mindanao. Doctors and health care providers have to treat disastrous effects of rights abuses such as physical and psychological wounds as post-traumatic stress disorder, said Dr. Pamugas.
Spineless
According to Dr. Geneve Rivera, secretary general of Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD), Arroyo is practically spineless in standing up for the Filipino people against impositions of the United States and other imperialist states. As examples, the doctor cited the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa) which subordinated the rights of Filipinos to that of the US troops and Japanese investors.
The endocrine system is instrumental in regulating metabolism, growth, development and puberty, and tissue function, and also plays a part in determining mood. In Arroyo’s case, said Dr. Gene Nisperos, vice-chair of HEAD, the abnormality of its endocrine functions clearly manifests in its insatiable greed that leads to left and right kickbacks, commissions, bribes and plunder. Despite continuous scandals to its name, Arroyo craves for more and still lusts for power, thus its push for charter change and threat of Martial Law, said Dr. Nisperos.
GMA’s condition is, unfortunately, incurable, said the health group. But there is hope. “The people’s misery bestowed by the Arroyo regime has a solution— through a unified people’s movement— fail Gloria’s Cha-cha and put an end to her ambition to stay in power.” (Bulatlat.com)
