RevGov being revived amid queries on Duterte isolation

Duterte diehards are inciting "revolutionary government" anew. It's being rushed amid worsening pandemic and economic hardship. Malacañang's declaration that the President is on COVID "perpetual isolation" spurred public chatter about his health and whereabouts. The RevGov push thus is seen as courting political crisis.

RevGov talks revived last week via a letter to the National Police. The Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte-National Executive Coordinating Committee outlined a "long march to Malacañang Palace." There is to be a "People's Declaration of a Revolutionary Government". Rody Duterte would be asked to head it under a "revolutionary constitution".

The RevGov is to last "until December 31, 2021," the MRRD-NECC said. "After which, election shall be held under a newly amended constitution as the fundamental law of the land in a Federal form."

Addressee PNP chief Archie Francisco Gamboa admitted reading the invitation dated Aug. 17. Signatories were Bobby Brillante, national coordinator for revolutionary government committee, and Atty. Francisco "Arlene" Buan, national spokesperson.

The MRRD-NECC assembled at Clark Freeport, Pampanga, last Saturday. Three hundred participants onsite and online signed a "people's manifesto for change". It was, as the organzers had assured Gamboa, peaceful. They are now to spread out nationwide for "people's consultations" prefacing the "long march".

Still there's wariness. Gen. Bernard Banac, PNP spokesman, told GMA News they are monitoring the group's activities. Its avowal of "revolutionary constitution" connotes destabilizing the present order. The PNP abides by only the 1987 Constitution and lawful authority, he said.

RevGov's charter revision also invites suspicion. It is likely to extend present elective officials in office and lift term limits, Fr. Ranhillo Aquino told GMA. "There are only two ways under the present Constitution to amend or revise. Those are by Congress calling for a constitutional convention or by itself voting on the changes," Aquino said. RevGov would be unconstitutional. He advised the MRRD-NECC to instead launch a people's initiative to prod Congress into any of the two modes.

Aquino had served in a constitutional commission that Duterte formed in 2017 to study revisions. Under former Senate president Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and former chief justice Hilario Davide, the body studied a transition to parliamentary form. It aimed to strengthen the present constitutional ban on political dynasties. Dynasts were defined as up to second-degree kinsmen who simultaneously or successively hold positions. RevGov is silent about that.

RevGov's Brillante likened their idea to the revolutionary government of President Cory Aquino till ratification of the 1987 Charter. But lawyer-priest Joaquin Bernas, one of the framers of that fundamental law, dispelled any parallels. Cory was President by electoral victory, he wrote in 2018. People had upheld her as leader via People Power and dictator Ferdinand Marcos had fled the country without a successor.

Circumstances are different today. Duterte has a duly elected successor. During the 2019 election campaign, opposition senatorial candidates opined that if Duterte joins a RevGoV he would in effect be vacating his elective office. VP Leni Robredo can take over. She can even call out the Armed Forces to quell the RevGov. Duterte had threatened to declare a RevGov then amid opposition criticisms.

Unclear was Duterte's reaction to the revived RevGov. He was last reported staying home in Davao City, but would meet today with his cabinet then address the nation tonight on counter-pandemic plans. Two weeks ago he wrongly accused of "revolution" medical frontlines who called for timeout to re-strategize against COVID-19. He had mistaken them for actors and musicians singing a Tagalog version of the "Les Miserables" song "Do You Hear the People Sing," about the Paris Uprising of 1832.

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Moscow rejects international criticism of its coronavirus vaccine. Its health minister traces the "major information warfare" to Western fear of competition, CNBC reported.

Yet even Russians doubt the safety and efficacy of the Sputnik-V inoculant that President Putin unveiled Aug. 11. "Epidemiologists, pharmacologists, and doctors in Russia have responded to the alleged breakthrough with skepticism, and they aren’t lining up to be injected first," the Daily Beast revealed last weekend.

Putin announced victory in the global race for a COVID-19 vaccine with Sputnik-V's registration by Moscow regulators. Phase-1 and -2 clinical trials supposedly showed the drug works and is safe. Phase-3 trial on more people, including foreigners, is to start today. Production will go full blast next month, for Russian mass inoculation by Oct. In Nov.-Dec. it will be available worldwide.

Experts in Germany, France, Spain and the U.S. decry the rush into final tests and mass use. The Russian developers, under the defense ministry, have yet to make public the results of the initial tests, BBC wrote.

Germany's health ministry warned that Putin's vaccine is dangerous "because it has not been sufficiently tested," Business Insider added. "It might cause people to distrust future vaccines if it proved unsafe or ineffective."

Scientists in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk are offering thousands of volunteers $1,997 to give the vaccine a try, The Beast quoted Znak news website. "That is a lot of money where the average monthly wage is $519."

Many fear it is dangerous to open the vaccine to the public weeks before the third-stage trials are completed. "Five months for the creation of such an important drug is too short a time,” The Beast also quoted popular newspaper Kommersant.

To promote the world's first vaccine, Putin has boasted that one of his daughters was among the first to volunteer. The authorities want thousands more Russians aged between 18 and 60 to follow suit.

The Daily Beast asked Russian doctors, scientists, business leaders, artists, housewives, and pensioners whether they would dare to take the untested, but potentially life-saving vaccine.

The president of the Russian Society of Evidence-based Medicine, Dr. Vasily Vlasov, said he had no plans to use the vaccine, nor would he recommend it to his friends or family. He sounded frustrated, explaining that there was no way to examine any of the findings from the first two stages of the trials. “Everything is based on some unclear protocols and the longer they delay publishing, the more doubts people will have.”

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