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FORTUNE.COM // DECEMBER 2019
Ostensibly a fact-finding operation, the
hearings—hours long and televised widely—
served as something between popcorn-worthy
political theater and a public flogging. At their
center, as master of ceremonies, was Richard
Gordon, a 74-year-old senator with a special
gift for grandstanding.
Gordon wasn’t especially concerned with
questions of risk and what, in real terms, Sano-
fi’s announcement meant for the Philippines—it
was a given that the country had bought a vac-
cine that put some children in harm’s way—he
was focused on how that had happened.
A news personality and litigator, Gordon
presided over the hearings—and the large cast
of summoned bureaucrats, politicians, scien-
tists, and drug company representatives—with
a gravitas that frequently gave way to fits of
showy outrage. He grilled. He lambasted. He
flashed righteous fury. When it came to discus-
sion, he often wouldn’t have it—barking at
witnesses who tried to give more than a yes or
no answer or flustered scientists who refused to
reduce a complicated technical matter to one
word. He admonished one trembling function-
ary for trying to read from a piece of paper.
He mocked everything from witnesses’
accents (especially that of the Frenchman Tri-
omphe, whom he referred to as “Mr. L’Arc de
Triomphe”) to their baldness. He made insinu-
ations and reserved special ire for Garin, the
former health secretary, despite the fact that
she postponed an emergency appendectomy
for four days in order to testify.
But Gordon had also come prepared, ready
to connect some dots for a public that was
hungry for someone to blame. While the previ-
ous government pleaded that it had pursued
an urgent public health good with resourceful,
red-tape-shredding efficiency, Gordon alleged
it was a sneaky and corrupt conspiracy that
recklessly endangered hundreds of thousands
of Filipino school kids. The political agenda
gave the hearings a through-the-looking-glass
quality at times where even basic realities
seemed in dispute—like whether dengue was
that much of a public health concern at all.
He homed in on Garin and Aquino’s meet-
ings with Sanofi and raised questions about
the timing—making hay of the fact that a few
Anti-Dengvaxia
protesters at a
rally in Manila on
Dec. 18, 2017.
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