THE Presidential Communication Coordination Office (PCOO) and its head, Secretary Martin Andanar, will always be convenient scapegoats for every failure to defend the President since communication is their area of concern.
However, defending a president who is known for his colorful language and his unorthodox ways, who wanders away from prepared speeches, who can be charming one moment and turn around and let loose an expletive to launch an attack on his enemies, including targets like the United Nations, the United States, the Catholic Church, even God, can be a challenging, if not an impossible task. It is almost like being in a constant state of playing the game of Russian roulette, not knowing when a verbal bullet will hit you, except that you are almost certain it will. It used to be that the President’s discourse is so unpredictable, but after two years of being in office, such unpredictability has become too predictable.
This predictable unpredictability is already part of the very character of the President that endears him to his supporters, even as it becomes the ammunition that fuels criticism from those who oppose him. Hence, there is no other way to defend the President from these criticisms except to call attention to the fact that it is in his nature. And while he can be asked to read prepared speeches and behave like a statesman the way he did in his recent State of the Nation Address and appear underwhelming and inauthentic, he can also be allowed to be his true self. We just have to be prepared to just suck it up and learn to internalize and mimic the beeps that one hears to mute unsavory and vulgar words.
Actually, the President’s vulgarity is no longer the real problem. The problem now lies in the way his speech is spun and justified by his people. This was most vividly seen in the recent brouhaha over his comment about the high incidence of rape cases in Davao City, to which he retorted that such is the case simply because there are plenty of beautiful women there. Naturally, this problematic statement will draw a lot of flak because it once again provides evidence of his misogynist tendencies. However, what could have been simply dismissed as once again the President becoming predictably unpredictable, that is, of being himself, and then redirecting the discourse away from this and into more substantial matters like the looming food crisis, spokesman Harry Roque Jr. even poured gasoline into the fire by deploying a problematic justification that is so environmentally deterministic and culturally relativist. According to Roque, the President is once again joking. But he did not stop there. He added that since the President is from the south, he meant no malice since the joke is one that only Visayans, who for Roque are more liberal, can understand and appreciate. Even a freshman student could punch a lot of holes into this defense offered by Roque.
Some people accuse the PCOO of not being able to defend the President from his detractors. But how can Secretary Andanar and his people at PCOO effectively do so when even the President’s spokesman is not able to effectively defend him, and in fact even ended up becoming part of the problem by offering a defense that also needed another defense.
And Roque is not alone. Other Cabinet members seem to have acquired the habit of making problematic statements that do not help, and in fact make the work of the President’s communication team even more difficult to discharge.
Take the case of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana who miserably painted the President as a clueless leader basing his intelligence information on fiction. When asked about the allegations that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is planning to assassinate the President, one which the President himself claimed, Lorenzana quipped that Duterte probably just picked it up from a book.
Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol can also be faulted for making controversial statements in relation to the prices and supply of food. While it is indeed technically safe and possible to wash, cook and eat rice grains infested with weevil, the political optics of asking people to eat these is just so insensitive. It is easy to see it as a publicity stunt. It didn’t help that when some legislators demanded that he resign, Piñol said that the NFA was not under his department, thereby painting himself as someone who is always ready to dip his fingers into an issue that is not under his area of concern just to gain publicity.
And then we have Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno who, when asked about rising prices, replied by saying that there is nothing wrong with it as long as it brings about economic growth. Indeed, economic theory argues that inflation is not necessarily bad and it can provide functional benefits to the economy by boosting economic growth. But to an ordinary citizen who suffers the ill effects of high prices of commodities, Diokno’s statement is patently insensitive. It is almost like Marie Antoinette telling starving Parisians to eat cake.
And this is not the first time that Diokno came out with a problematic statement detrimental to the President’s public image. Diokno, together with Socio-economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd, practically undermined the President’s pro-federalism stance when they came out strongly opposing federalism, with Dominguez even saying that he would not support it. These economic managers of the President practically threw under the bus the federalism campaign, which many analysts now believe to have been mortally hit.
When the President curses and fires away rape jokes, the onus is on him. And the work of his communication team to defend him may not be easy, but at least the President is being held accountable for his own actions.
Secretaries Roque, Lorenzana, Piñol, Diokno, Pernia and Dominguez act as alter egos of the President. They should all endeavor to ensure that their public actions and statements do not in any way compromise or undermine the President’s position, or make him accountable for actions that are not his own, but by convention are always imaged as done on his behalf.
Otherwise, the opposition doesn’t have to do anything anymore to politically wound the President. The actions of his own people are already enough to harm him.
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