IN HIS latest television appearance last night President Rodrigo Roa Duterte reinstated Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) for August 4 to 18 in response to the calls of health workers to do so because of the alarming rate of infections and deaths in an overwhelmed health system.

Indeed, the medical frontliners, who are supported and paid the least have been expected to do the most during this pandemic, are the people who are most at risk. Just consider the government officials in their fancy new SUVs with arrogant bodyguards in backup vehicles weaving in and out of traffic as if they are the only ones who deserve to be on time, while medical frontliners use borrowed bicycles from citizens whose own livelihoods are in peril.

Or perhaps news of the highest paid government functionaries like the Solicitor General, clearing millions a month, while medical frontliners suffer low wages and delays on overtime and hazard pay releases.

But while Duterte heeded their call to return to MECQ, it did not come without a jab at the sector he had dramatically thanked during his recent State of the Nation Address (SONA).

In typical “boss baby” fashion, the president lectured the medical frontliners for taking their cause publicly through social media and not writing him directly and quietly. As if such a letter would even reach his desk if they did so.

“Next time, huwag niyo ako parinig-rinigin ng revolution. Naku, diyos ko, ‘yan ang mas delikado sa Covid,” warned Duterte. “Eh kung magrebolusyon kayo, you will give me a free ticket to stage a counter revolution. How I wish you would do it.”

Like Dirty Harry Callaghan with his .44 magnum pointed at your face: “Go ahead, punk. MAKE MY DAY!”

It’s classic tyrant playbook, hiding in a cloak of what a democratic and constitutional government is, Duterte is branding legitimate discourse, expression of discontent and dissent against him and his management of government as a revolution against the government and the downfall of the State.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The call of the medical frontliners for government action is a presentation of a legitimate concern not just to the leaders and policy makers but also to the people, to which the latter quickly responded with a campaign for self-imposed ECQ.

This reminds me of Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” the 1988 song which eventually became the anthem of the 2011 civil resistance in Tunisia, revolutions in North Africa and the Arab Spring:

“Don't you know/ They're talkin' bout a revolution/It sounds like a whisper… While they're standing in the welfare lines/ Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation/ Wasting time in the unemployment lines/ Sitting around waiting for a promotion… Poor people gonna rise up/ And get their share/ Poor people gonna rise up/ And take what's theirs… Don't you know/ You better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run… It's finally the tables are starting to turn/ Talkin' bout a revolution…”

If there is going to be a revolution it isn’t going to be from the noisy people and groups airing legitimate concerns over social media. It’s going to be from the people who whisper to one another their discontent – their hunger, lack of health and welfare services, police brutality, social inequality, abusive politicians – while on lockdown.