Makabayan solons seek probe into ‘VIP vaccination’ of some gov’t officials

MANILA, Philippines — Makabayan lawmakers in the House called on Tuesday for an investigation into the “VIP vaccination” of some members of the Cabinet, President Rodrigo Duterte’s security personnel, and the military.

“The Makabayan bloc will file a resolution related to this so we can investigate what happened here?” Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas said in Filipino in an online press conference. “We have a lot of questions about this, not only about the administering of the vaccine.”

These were some of the questions she raised:

• How did the vaccine get into the country?
• Why was there no approval of the Food and Drug Administration?
• What did the Department of Health and the Bureau of Customs do?

The resolution will likely be filed next week, according to ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro.

The Makabayan bloc said that the early vaccination of some security personnel and Cabinet officials violated the law.

“It’s really shameful, what the government is doing right now. They violated Republic Act 9711 by using a vaccine not yet approved by the FDA. This shows that those in power did not follow the law themselves,” Brosas said.

The members of the Makabayan coalition also said that the Duterte administration went against its own inoculation road map, wherein frontline health workers should be first in line for the vaccine.

“I thought we should ‘heal as one’? Then why did they get vaccines on their own? What President Duterte said was true that, by December, there would already be a vaccine. But then it turns out it’s not for the masses or frontline health workers but for the military and those in power,” Brosas said.

“The Duterte administration could really not do away with VIP treatment. They would really save themselves first before the citizens, before the health workers, before the poor,” she added.

For her part, Bayan Muna Rep. Eufemia Cullamat said: “They should be ashamed.”

“Stop VIP vaccination,” she added.

The lawmakers demanded transparency from the administration on the issue, citing supposedly conflicting statements earlier issued by different officials.

“It’s only right that we should really find out about this directly from Duterte because what’s happening has become confusing. We don’t know the real story,” Bayan Muna Rep. Ferdinand Gaite said.

Castro, meanwhile, said: “The statements are conflicting. There’s only one question here. What the Makabayan bloc is asking is: Did you break the law?”

“We demand transparency as this also involves a corruption issue — because some individuals are being prioritized,” she added.

The Duterte administration should stop justifying the early vaccination of some officials and the members of the military, Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate also stressed.

“This administration should be transparent and should stop justifying what is already clear. The FDA already issued a statement that it had not allowed anyone [to use any COVID-19 vaccine]. And it’s clear under the law that this is prohibited and it’s illegal,” he added.

Vaccine ‘black market’?

In the Senate, Sen. Risa Hontiveros urged the government to answer all questions regarding the controversial vaccination of some officials.

She said a “black market” for COVID-19 vaccines “should not be tolerated in any way.”

The senator called on the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 to provide a transparency report that she said would be “crucial” in preventing the waste of funds or even corruption.

She added that a report would also give peace of mind to the public whose fear of using vaccines remained high. The report should “reflect the decisions of the NTF every step of the way,” according to Hontiveros.

“The vaccination plan clearly says that the first step is to locally approve the vaccines… On top of this, we promised that we would vaccinate our healthcare workers, who put their lives on the line every day, first, which we also didn’t. So what’s happening to our plan,” she said.

Hontiveros reminded the government that safety should be the first priority in buying vaccines.

“If the vaccine is unsafe, who will be held accountable? There are major life-threatening consequences in any lapse in this mass vaccination program,” she said.

The President, in a speech over the weekend, mentioned that a number of Filipinos had already received the COVID-19 vaccine from China’s Sinopharm.

On Monday, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año and the military separately disclosed that some members of the Cabinet and the Presidential Security Group got inoculated against COVID-19.

It was not clear which vaccine was used, but Año said that the drug was administered under an emergency use authorization (EUA).

However, the FDA said it had not authorized the use of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Malacañang, meanwhile, had previously insisted that getting an unregistered vaccine was not against the law.

“First of all, it’s not against the law to be inoculated with a vaccine that is yet to be registered. What’s illegal is the distribution and the sale. And this was injected on soldiers who gave their consent,” presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in an online briefing Monday.

In a press briefing on Tuesday, Roque said there was no violation of the anti-graft law when members of the PSG got inoculated with donated COVID-19 vaccines as these were only “tokens” without “much value.”

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