Duterte: Roadmap to recovery from COVID-19? Budget, medicine first

MANILA, Philippines — Medicine and the budget to address the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic should come first before a “roadmap to recovery” from the pandemic can be drafted, President Rodrigo Duterte said.

Duterte said this as he addressed critics questioning the absence of a post-COVID-19 plan in his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA).

“Sabihin ninyo wala kaming roadmap. The roadmap ng recovery natin, sabi ko nga hindi ako nagbabasa ng newspaper. If it’s about me I do not read… ‘Duterte, where is the roadmap?’” Duterte said in a taped address aired Friday.

“Hindi nga kami maka-roadmap because we were talking about budget. Itong gabing ito. I could not have uttered a single sentence about roadmap to recovery kasi ang una talaga dyan, ang medicine,” he explained.

Several lawmakers and groups pointed out that Duterte was not able to highlight his administration’s plan to address the COVID-19 crisis in his SONA.

Malacañang chided critics, saying they must have been deaf, as it noted that the President underscored the need to pass a number of laws including the proposed “We Recover as One Law” aimed to speed-up the country’s recovery from the pandemic.

/MUF