MANY would like to focus on the alleged booboos made by the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) and its attached agencies, from “Norwegia” to “Rogelio Golez” to that unfortunate pineapple that was mistakenly used as the logo for the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE).
Indeed, mistakes like these have to be called out not only for PCOO, but for any media organization.
After all, this is something that is not PCOO’s monopoly. Even the Philippine Daily Inquirer committed a mistake when it wrongly labeled a carabao as a horse. ABS-CBN and GMA-7 have on many occasions also committed booboos. Rappler’s mistakes are not even accidental, but are malicious twisting of facts.
But recently, PCOO has been under attack not from the critics and detractors of President Duterte but from among his most rabidly loyal supporters. At the epicenter of this dissension from within the ranks of the Duterte camp is Secretary Martin Andanar who many accuse of being incompetent. Recently, rumors went around that he would be replaced by former broadcaster Jay Sonza.
When one probes deeper into the criticisms, Andanar and PCOO are being taken to task for not doing enough to defend the President from attacks, and for failing to promote the positive accomplishments of the President. The government is allegedly losing the communications war, and some even say that had it not been for the social media warriors, the message of the President would be drowned by the partisan noise and misrepresentations from his critics and mainstream media.
There is this stream of argument that appears to excise from PCOO’s accomplishment and decouple from it those messages that are aired and disseminated via social media by bloggers like Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson. There are even people who seem to behave as if Uson is an island of her own, separate and autonomous from the PCOO in which she belongs, and whose social media blogs cannot be credited as part of her job. This is partly due to the stance by the PCOO to differentiate Uson’s so-called official work, bound by the conventions laid down by the ethical standards for government officials, and her so-called individual blogging, which even the President has said was an exercise of her right.
Hence, we see a thread of arguments where Duterte loyalists criticize Andanar and the PCOO, even as they deify Uson whom they consider as being by her lonesome in defending the President in social media using her private personal account. And worse, when Uson’s behavior was called out in connection with the controversial federalism video, loyal Duterte supporters accused Andanar and the PCOO not only of abandoning Uson, but even of joining those who were critical of her. PIA Director Harold Clavite and Usec Lorraine Marie Badoy were pilloried in social media for their critical view of Uson. What made the situation worse was when news came out that several PCOO top-officials wanted her out.
Hence, what is being imaged is an agency in disarray, unable to protect Uson, who is one of its own, and the President.
A closer analysis of the situation reveals that the root of all these is the failure of many to correctly understand the nature of the work of PCOO as a government agency. To an ordinary person, PCOO is not only a publicist and PR office for the President, but also his propagandist and apologist. They expect the PCOO and its officials to aggressively engage the critics of the President in the arena of public discourse as combatants in social media. They want Andanar and his officials to fight fire with fire, and use taxpayer’s money and government resources to slug it out and engage the President’s critics, including those in mainstream media, in a mud wrestling match in the gutter of name-calling and aggressive, below-the-belt political combat. An eye for an eye joust that someone even compared to how Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends US President Donald Trump, in which she can even transmogrify into a lie for every lie just to deflect public criticism.
But many forget that there is another office tasked to speak on behalf of the President, and that office is held by presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. More importantly, as government officials, Andanar and his people in PCOO are bound by ethical codes of conduct which include among many things an adherence to proper decorum and standards of behavior.
The main mandate of PCOO is “to serve as the premier arm of the Executive Branch in engaging and involving the citizenry and the mass media in order to enrich the quality of public discourse on all matters of governance and build a national consensus thereon.” Certainly, engaging the critics of the President in an all-out war, like the way those independent bloggers and Uson in her so-called private time do it in their social media posts, will not in any way build a national consensus. It is also doubtful if such an approach can enrich the quality of public discourse.
It is not the job of PCOO to engage the section of the public and the citizenry critical of the President in an all-out discursive fistfight. In fact, its job is to win them over so that a consensus can be reached.
Yet, others also fault the PCOO for not being able to communicate the positive things which the President does. However, this is an incorrect allegation. Communicating with the entire Filipino people, and not only with the social media base of the President’s support, occurs in various modalities, many of which happen in face-to-face interactions. The PCOO, through the PIA and its other attached agencies, has been relentless in doing this, beyond social media postings. Secretary Andanar was also able to improve the ratings and market shares of government stations, and upgrade the communication support infrastructures of the President.
Unfortunately, positive posts in social media, while done, do not get enough engagements. This is not the fault of Secretary Andanar and PCOO. This is the fault of the supporters themselves who rarely read, like and share positive social media posts about the government. Many would rather spend time on posts attacking Robredo, the Liberal Party and anti-Duterte social media bloggers, than share a post on a youth seminar organized by the PIA somewhere in Mindanao; it is not Uson who shares it in her blog.
It is unfortunate that for many, the best way to serve the President is to be in a constant state of combat against his enemies, that even those who tirelessly work for him become part of the target when they do not or are unable to join the mudwrestling contest.
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