COULD THE DENGVAXIA TRAGEDY HAVE BEEN AVOIDED?:

What might have been had Noynoy Aquino been Impeached in 2015.

Back in 2015, nobody knew of the human drama and tragedy that was about to unfold involving some 800,000 school children and their families and of the waste of some 3.5 Billion pesos worth of taxpayer’s money.  I am of course, referring to the Dengvaxia controversy.

(Source:  CNN Philippines)

Well documented are the meetings President Aquino and his Cabinet secretaries had with Sanofi, makers of the vaccine.  It is also clear as day that regardless of the merits of the Dengvaxia vaccine, its procurement was railroaded and implemented in record time.  The whole purchase reeks of irregularity and of an administration drunk with impunity.

The timeline for this purchase was around November 2014, when the first meeting between President Aquino and Sanofi executives took place in China. Within the year, Sanofi arranged to have the drug included in the Philippine National Formulary even if it had not undergone sufficient testing.  Then, in a blitz on December 2015, Aquino and DOH Secretary Janette Garin met with Sanofi official, submitted a proposal to the DBM for its purchase and licensed the drug as a Dengue Vaccine for “all types of Individuals from 9-45 years old living in high-risk areas.”

It is simply chilling and mind-boggling to learn that this tragedy was very nearly avoided.

We recall back in July of 2014, there was a move to impeach then President Noynoy Aquino over the Disbursement Allocation Plan (DAP) controversy.  Three complaints, one filed by Oliver Lozano, another filed by Buboy Syjuco and another filed by Neri Colmenares.  The impeachment complaint was unsurprisingly thrown out in September of that year by the highly sympathetic House of Representatives.  Had the impeachment succeeded in gaining traction, the impeachment may very well have prevented the tragedy that was to become Dengvaxia.  Worse may have been that the failure of the impeachment may have further emboldened Aquino, who, unsurprisingly, used the same DAP playbook in raising the funds for Dengvaxia.

(A news report from that time)

Some have argued that the same would have been a waste of time, as it was already the twilight of Benigno Aquino III’s administration.  We could weather whatever incompetence and “Noynoying” that was about to come right?  Political stability was the more important concern back then.

Let us mull the irony of this argument for a moment.

Of course, one shouldn’t impeach an official on the basis of preventing something he/she might do just as much as one shouldn’t withhold impeachment on the argument that his/her term is about to end.  We punish an official on the basis of what he/she has done and not on the basis of damage potential.

To Impeach or not to Impeach

The takeaway is this:  It is never too late in the day to impeach an official.  Once that person has committed an impeachable offense, it is time to let him go, regardless of the damage he might or might not do.

PRESIDENT DOES NOT NEED TO DEFEND DAP

Last July 14, 2014, President Aquino, reacting to the declaration of his Disbursement Acceleration Program as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court gave a national address basically saying that:

1.  The Supreme Court justices were being unreasonable
2.  DAP is legal.
3.  DAP benefits the people.
4.  DAP is necessary

I'm sure that by now everyone has an opinion regarding this issue.

Now these arguments have been discussed in other blogs and newspaper opinions and I don't think its worth discussing here because I have a different argument as to why the President should never have defended the DAP in the first place:

The DAP has already been discontinued it is a moot and academic issue

One of the procedural issues raised by the Government in Araullo vs. Abad is that the DAP case should no longer be decided because it is moot and academic.  Being moot and academic is an argument often brought to the court, invoking judicial conservatism and hesitation to decide a case because a controversy no longer exists.  It is the first of four requisites that needs to be complied with in order that the Supreme Court can exercise its power of judicial review.

On page 21 of the Decision, the Solicitor General claims that:

DAP as a program, no longer exists, thereby mooting these present cases brought to challenge its constitutionality. Any constitutional challenge should no longer be at the level of the program, which is now extinct, but at the level of its prior applications or the specific disbursements under the now defunct policy. We challenge the petitioners to pick and choose which among the 116 DAP projects they wish to nullify, the full details we will have provided by February 5. We urge this Court to be cautious in limiting the constitutional authority of the President and the Legislature to respond to the dynamic needs of the country and the evolving demands of governance, lest we end up straightjacketing our elected representatives in ways not consistent with our constitutional structure and democratic principles. (footnotes omitted)

Of course, the Supreme Court did not believe this claiming that the case should be decided since the DAP is capable of being repeated and yet evading review.

Basically what I am saying now is that the President at first wanted the court not to decide on the case because it was now moot and academic.  Now that the court ruled on its constitutionality, the previously alleged moot and academic issue is now being forced down people's throats--probably for no other reason than that the President merely wants to cover his a$$ and that of his erring subordinates.

At the supreme court he says:  "Please don't decide on the DAP anymore, we've discontinued it already.  It has done its job."

Before the people he says:  "the Supreme Court is wrong!  DAP is not unconstitutional, we need DAP."

The President, through his alter ego Butch Abad and the Office of the Solicitor General is not being candid to the Supreme Court:  He cannot claim before the Court that he discontinued the program and won't pursue it any longer and now declare to the people that he wants the decision reconsidered because he thinks DAP is constitutional and that the people need it (as was implied in the July 14, 2014 speech).

So basically, what I am saying is that the President wasted our time and ruined his credibility by giving that palengkero speech of his defending a program that he had discontinued months before and even going through the trouble of hiring Atty. Raissa Robles to find a loophole for it, and he continues to waste our time claiming that he needs DAP to continue implementing his projects and his "reforms."  What a guy!

Update 7/18/14
Now, the government is appealing to the people about how the government needs to continue the DAP program with news items like, DPWH stops P5B flood-control work.  The news report in part reads:

Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson: No choice. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has 

put on hold some P5 billion worth of high-impact, flood-control projects funded by the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional.

Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson on Thursday said that “with the Supreme Court ruling, I have no choice [but to temporarily shelve the projects] until a supplemental budget is passed to implement them, particularly those that have yet to be started.”

He stressed the need to resume work on the flood-control projects, which he said were among the agency’s priority infrastructure programs.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/620983/dpwh-stops-p5b-flood-control-work#ixzz37o3NfdgM
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

Obviously then, the DPWH cannot just now cancel these projects because by Abad's and the OSG's own admission, the DAP was cancelled way back in 2013. Articles such as these are deliberately misleading, if not in fact blatant lies.

End of update

Also, noted blogger Ilda, tweeted this a couple of hours ago:

PNoy contradicted himself in his speech. He insisted before that they already stopped using #DAP but on Monday blamed SC for ending program.
— ilda (@ilda_talk) July 17, 2014

The President should have just stuck to his guns:  claim good faith; say that the program was discontinued in good faith; and not to repeat the same in good faith.  Just as it had declared in the supreme court that the program is discontinued and that they will not repeat the same.  Perhaps the Supreme Court did not sense "good faith" when Abad and the Solicitor General brought the argument of mootness before it.

To Conclude 
If the President claimed the DAP moot and academic before the Supreme Court, it should likewise be moot and academic before his bosses.  He should stop shoving it down our throats.  He discontinued the program on his own and he did not need the Supreme Court to do it for him.  He is obviously just looking for a scapegoat and throwing a tantrum because his popularity ratings declined.

Thank you for your patience.

Don't be stupid be a smarty, come and join the lib'ral party

(photo courtesy of www.journal.com.ph)