Covid-19 continues to fill the news, while the horrors inflicted by pandemic panic are largely ignored. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than with America’s largest former territory and Asia’s first democracy, the Philippines. There President Rodrigo Duterte has declared martial law in all but name and established himself as dictator of the world’s 12th largest country. Soldiers patrol the streets on foot and in armored personnel carriers to enforce what’s probably the fiercest and longest-lasting lockdown in the world – and with no end in sight.
But relax. It’s okay, because it’s in the name of protecting his people from the dreaded virus. It’s a Covidocracy! And one that could not be possible without the complicity of lending agencies and donors from around the world who appear to care nothing about the Filipino people.
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