Cebu City vice mayor says Duterte’s sentiment vs Cebuanos a “challenge” to them

July 9, 2020

Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama said on Thursday that President Rodrigo Duterte's sentiment against the Cebuanos for the surge in the number of coronavirus cases in the city served as a "challenge" for them.

In a virtual press briefing, Rama also said that with the intervention of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, "politics" would be set aside.

"We will definitely be taking it as a positive challenge and insight so that it will give us a lesson to really be united and prove that we can be one in attacking this COVID-19," he said.

In the previous televised messages, Duterte said the Cebuanos were hard-headed as he also indicated that because of politics, the coronavirus cases significantly rose, prompting the IATF, with his approval, to place Cebu City under the enhanced community quarantine, the strictest quarantine measure that the government has been implementing in the country.

Rama lauded the intervention of the IATF, through Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu and other members of the Cabinet, in Cebu City.

He said the IATF brought in multi-sectoral platform where "we will be orchestrated...to do what we are supposed to do."

Asked by Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque during the virtual press briefing that politics was one of the reasons why COVID-19 cases soared in Cebu City, Rama said, "we will no longer talk about politics. What is most important right now, we'll just have to sing the Barry Manilow's 'One Voice' and (whether) we like it or nor, the President is there, he is the producer of the classical concert or the concert."

He likened Cimatu to a conductor and all of them as members of the orchestra in the Cebu Island, "with the notes that we will all be mindful that it is more of united we stand and divided we fall as a reminder that we can definitely be one in attacking COVID-19."

He expressed belief that with the cooperation of everyone, they would be successful in addressing the pandemic.

"We wish with the advent of the team of Secretary Roy Cimatu, we will be seeing light at the end of the tunnel and wishing that the President would no longer tell us that we are hard-headed here," Rama added.

Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega, who was in Cebu City, said the ECQ that the IATF imposed on Cebu City has been helping in handling COVID-19 cases.

"Yes, the rates of their positive (cases) here in Cebu have gone down because of ECQ and there is also a decreasing trend in their mortality rates. So, the ECQ is effective here in Cebu right now," he said.

He said they are preparing Cebu for possible opening up of its economy and the need to increase the capacity of its health system. Celerina Monte/DMS