Doing it different (but still better): The lesson from Taiwan

ONE of the defenses offered by fanatic supporters of the Duterte administration’s demonstrably ineffective management of the coronavirus pandemic when it is compared with the successful program of neighboring Vietnam, which I discussed in Tuesday’s column, is that the Philippines is a democracy and Vietnam is not. Being an authoritarian regime, the argument goes, Vietnam’s government could impose any necessary measures no matter how strict, because it does not have to worry about being second-guessed by an elected legislature or political opposition.

As I pointed out on Tuesday, that argument is rather specious, as President Rodrigo Duterte and the Interagency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) have been given virtually unchecked powers to address the pandemic here. Thus, in practice there are far more similarities than differences between Vietnam and the Philippines in terms of administrative structure, at least as far as managing the pandemic is concerned.