It’s back in the news. And so are the excuses.

Benigno Aquino III’s crusted defense in the continuing Dengvaxia scandal is that it is all about politics.

Consequently, Aquino trashes the notion that the scandal involves reckless approvals at the presidential level, catalyzing colossal malversation at the Cabinet level just below.

While he claims that Sanofi Pasteur, the drug company behind the scandal, belatedly informed the government of Dengvaxia’s dangers, owing to recent findings they claim surfaced after the drug had been purchased by the government, he likewise asserts circumstances linking him at the very onset of negotiations with Sanofi were above-board and only forcibly tarnished by “politics.”

Politics is indeed at the core of Aquino’s complicity. The political strain is integral in consciously allowing the harmful effects of Dengvaxia to impact on the scale that it has. Let the timeline validate Aquino’s incredibly astute analysis.

On 9 November 2014, more than half a year before the completion of clinical trials to license Dengvaxia, Aquino met with Sanofi officials. Eight months later, still prior to the release of the results of Dengvaxia’s trials, Aquino’s Secretary of Health started negotiations to purchase the yet unlicensed vaccine.

On 27 July 2015, two and a quarter years prior to Sanofi’s announcement of “recent” tests, Dengvaxia’s licensing results cautioned that “subsequent first wild-type infection (which is typically less severe) may have occurred in a vaccination-induced immunologic setting, which is more analogous to a secondary infection (which is associated with an increased risk of severe disease).”

Despite the red flag, in a meeting in December 2015 between Aquino and Sanofi, his health secretary proposed purchasing three million doses of the vaccine wholesale.

Less than two weeks later, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave its approval. A week after the FDA green light, however belated, a request was made to exempt the vaccine from the Formulary Executive Council (FEC) that reviews all drugs available in the country.

The following morning after the request to the FEC, Aquino’s Budget Department issued a P3.5-billion Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) to purchase the vaccines. Within three weeks, the Philippine Children’s Medical Center made a ₱P3-billion purchase order (PO). Both the SARO and the PO were issued without approval from the FEC.

At year end, officials determined that the lot ordered was nearly expired. Simply add this to the razzle-dazzle approvals which began with the Aquino-Sanofi meeting before the clinical trials needed to license Dengvaxia was completed in 2015.

Indeed, as Aquino correctly surmises, politics was involved. And together with it, virulent and blind political will.

Unfortunately, it is Aquino’s political will that fueled the abbreviated approvals and shortcuts that underlie the recent charges of corruption and malversation now brought to the Dengvaxia equation.

Debunking accusations of reckless imprudence blamed on him, a completely remorseless Aquino claims his acts were demanded by a sense of urgency.

If there was any urgency it was politically induced by an impending election ban on fund releases. So, funds budgeted for other purposes were switched on the pretext of an undeclared dengue epidemic. To justify shortcutting statutory protocols on appropriations and purchases, Aquino brandished a graph depicting a steep rise in dengue-related cases. Unfortunately, his numbers were directly debunked by evidence showing otherwise. No epidemic existed at the time.

Throughout Aquino’s Dengvaxia fiasco, numbers, figures and graphs have been wielded to foment lies and justify shortcuts. From the selectivity of averages in Dengvaxia’s original licensing trials, to the approval timeline that preceded test results, to the insidious eleventh-hour switching of budgeted funds to un-budgeted programs — all propelled by Aquino’s political will.

So, who politicized the Dengvaxia scandal? Res ipsa loquitur.

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