I wrote this out of rage and exasperation to our former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte at the time when death tolls escalated even more due to covid contaminations across cities and provinces. Even if you were a healthcare worker or a frontliner risking your every breath in order to serve people and earn a living at the same time, it is not enough reason for a President to allow his people to surrender their lives without him, being the Leader doing and moving all “heaven and earth” means to save and protect them. Frustratingly, all he did was a quick press conference, “encouraging” them in a very ironic and humanely incomprehensible manner, “Give up your lives. Be a hero.” Who would want to die and leave their families behind just for the namesake, “hero or heroine”? Why do you play God, selecting whose lives should remain intact or unscathed and whose should suffer and perish? I can’t believe that a person who holds so much power and control can cower into the corner and convince his people to die for their country without him giving all the fight he could ever mobilize. Where’s the sense of agency, the recognition that you have enough courage, skills, ingenuity and resources to protect the lives of those who are at the brink of death? How inhumanely pathetic could you be to distinguish that your life is much more worthy to save and that theirs have to end? Who’s overly entitled, again?