IN the name of safety during a time of pandemic, the House of Representatives has embarked on a ridiculous attempt to legislate culture. House Bill 8149, authored by Marikina Rep. Bayani Fernando, would institutionalize a new Filipino way of greeting each other, seeking to replace the handshake and the “pagmamano.” The bill, which has already been approved by the House plenary on second reading, on becoming law, would make it mandatory to perform the gesture of putting the right hand over the heart, and slightly bowing with eyes closed. The proposal, if approved, would cover not only Filipinos, but other people in the country, and would obligate agencies to spend resources to inform and disseminate the new gesture and to encourage people to adopt it.

The intent of the law is to make our greetings contactless to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus disease of 2019 (Covid-19). Aside from the fact that the proposed law assumes that Covid-19, or at least the way it is now spreading, will never be contained and will stay with us forever that it now requires us legislating what would otherwise be an organic form of gesture. The move is also lacking in historical and cultural sensibility.