CALD Panel Calls for “Global Pandemic Strategy”

The evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic should have made the world realize that no one is safe until everyone is safe. Close to two years since the pandemic struck, however, no global strategy to address the health crisis is in sight.

“What the pandemic has done, clearly, is that it has emphasized the failure of multilateral institutions and arrangements to make an appropriate response at the global or international level”, observed Abhisit Vejjajiva, former prime minister of Thailand and former Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD) chairperson. “While everybody seems to recognize the fact that no country is safe unless everybody is made safe…, there was never any attempt to distribute the vaccines in a way that would have the strongest and the most efficient impact on reducing the pandemic around the world”, he added.

This seeming failure of multilateralism was also emphasized by Florencio “Butch” Abad, former Philippine minister of budget and former CALD chairperson. “We do need a new model of multilateralism as an international platform to restore global security using a global public health strategy with the vaccine as the decisive weapon”, he argued. He said that the UN-backed COVAX can be a prototype of this new form of multilateralism that needs to be established in order to contain the pandemic as soon as possible.

Abad cited an International Monetary Fund (IMF) study which provides recommendations on how to end the COVID-19 crisis by 2022. The study suggests that this can be done if high-income countries or democracies can pull together USD 50 billion to: 1) vaccinate 60% of the population of all countries by the end of 2022; and 2) capacitate all countries in conducting widespread contact tracing and testing.

The problem, however, is that access to COVID-19 vaccines has been politicized to serve certain geopolitical interests.  This can be clearly seen in the case of Taiwan, which, according to Peifen Hsieh, was blocked from sealing a vaccine deal due to China’s last-minute intervention. Hsieh, who serves as deputy director for international affairs of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said that the vaccine donations from the United States and Japan saved Taiwan from the fallout of this halted deal.  Commenting on the vaccine donations of Washington and Tokyo, she noted: “These vaccines are not just the biological vaccines that fight the coronavirus. They are also political vaccines to stabilize a vibrant democracy from external and very hostile interference.”

Vejjajiva, Abad, and Hsieh served as the main speakers in the CALD panel during the 2021 Asia Centre Conference held on 10 September 2021.  The panel, entitled “The Geopolitics of Vaccines: Implications for Democratic Renewal in Asia” was moderated by Marites Vitug, editor-at-large of Rappler Philippines.