The emperor’s new ‘crisis communications’

ATTACKING local media with your “crisis comms,” composed of supposed ideologues of media past, is not how you tackle the questions of Kagay-anons.

It is, to put it mildly, a strategic and tactical error of the highest order.

Questions of accountability, transparency, and governance are not mosquitoes to be swatted away by your brigade of known spin doctors, paid hacks, and trolls; they are the bedrock of the office you hold. 

Threatening broadcasters to shut up because they are not cowing to the narrative you are selling is a tactic that belongs in a black-and-white newsreel from the 1970s, not in a modern, aspirational metropolis. 

This is not how a democratic city is supposed to function, nong.

You seem to be operating under the delusion that if you muzzle the weatherman, it will stop raining. 

But the rain — and the traffic — remains.

Let us speak of the traffic woes of the city. 

While the City Engineer’s office proudly releases lists of “233 completed infrastructure projects,” the daily reality for the commuter suggests otherwise. 

We are told of P97 million allocated for flood control projects extending into 2026 to prevent another Sendong, yet the streets of the highway remain a parking lot at the slightest drizzle. 

The disconnect between the press release and the pavement is jarring. 

One has ample time to contemplate the existential void while idling near the stalled drainage projects that seem to serve as monuments to bureaucratic inertia rather than engineering solutions.

And then, the matter of the “Task Force Basura.”

It is a branding triumph, certainly — giving a military-sounding name to the basic parochial function of picking up trash. But why did it require a “Task Force” and an “ultimatum” to solve a problem that should never have existed? 

While the administration now trumpets the arrival of a new contractor to clear the backlog, the stench of the previous months lingers. It raises the question: if the system was working, why the sudden need for emergency measures?

You’re protesting the allegations with the vigor of a man trying to convince a mirror he is handsome.

“The gentleman doth protest too much,” Shakespeare might have noted. 

Lest we forget the water crisis that forced you to declare a State of Emergency earlier this year. When the dispute between the COWD and the bulk water supplier threatens to turn the taps dry, it is not an “act of God” or “force majeure” — it is a failure of foresight and contract management.

It is failed act of a micro-managing, overly-sensitive, political ignoramus.

Governance is not about winning the morning news cycle.

It is about ensuring the garbage truck arrives without a press conference, the traffic flows without a police escort, and a weekly social welfare service that doesn’t need to be named after you — an elected official.

You cannot PR your way out of a traffic jam. 

You cannot spin a pile of uncollected trash into gold. 

And you certainly cannot bully a city into believing that competence is present when the evidence of its absence is parked, unpaid, and uncollected, right outside their door.

Pfft.

The seven-hour glitch

“They’ll be asked nothing about their absurd justifications, born in the shadow of the total lie.” – Otto Rene Castillo, Apolitical Intellectuals

WITH the President’s favored senatorial slate dominating the recently concluded midterm polls, many of this administration’s apologists interpret this phenomenon as validation of its supposed war on drugs.

The Commission on Human Rights puts the killings brought about by the war on drugs at 27,000 drug “suspects” killed. Although the Philippine National Police has a lower figure of those killed in the last three years at 5,300 people, mostly urban poor, it could not be denied that this is an unprecedented carnage.

Many apologists were quick to point out that the midterm polls win of this administration meant that the people “have spoken” in support of the war on drugs with no less than Foreign Affairs Sec. Teodoro Locsin Jr. leading the pack.

However, the seven-hour glitch of the Commission on Election’s “transparency server” has effectively put a cloud of doubt on the winners at the senatorial polls. From 0.4 percent of all precincts nationwide uploaded to Comelec’s server at around 6:15 pm Monday last week, it suddenly jumped to 90.57 percent of total precincts in the wee hours of Tuesday.

I’m sure everyone who followed the midterm polls closely has heard of Comelec’s reasons for the server glitch. Comelec Commissioner Rowena Guanzon explained that the data packets “flooded” their server after they simultaneously received the digital election returns.

Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo offered a more technical reason for the glitch but hidden in jargon by saying that a “java error” was the reason for the seven-hour glitch of their transparency server.

Let me remind you, my readers, that this is not the first time that Comelec has handled automated elections. The 2019 midterm polls was the fourth time they have handled automated elections in the country. Voters started shading ovals next to the names of candidates in the 2010 presidential elections. Given that they have been at it for four polls already, shouldn’t they be good at it?

An election advocacy group compared the 2016 and this year’s election. The results are staggering if not starkly points out the inefficiency of Comelec. In the 2016 polls, there were 120 secure digital memory cards that malfunctioned, 801 vote counting machines malfunctioned, and there was a 10-minute glitch in Comelec’s server. In comparison, the recently concluded elections showed that 1,665 SD cards malfunctioned, 961 VCMs malfunctioned, and the controversial seven-hour glitch in its server.

With those figures, don’t the voters have the right to question the outcome of the midterm polls?

Carlos Conde, Asia researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, pointed out that Ronald dela Rosa, one of the biggest winners in the elections, “may still have a date with justice.” Remember that dela Rosa was one of the foremost architects of the drug war.

“However one views the election results, it won’t change the fact that victorious candidates implicated in ‘drug war’ crimes shouldn’t receive a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Conde said in a statement.

For me, the recently concluded midterm elections are neither validation nor approbation of the President’s “war on drugs” but a confirmation that voters can easily be misrepresented in an election.

As a colleague succinctly puts it: “Comelec has spoken, not the people.”

Let’s kill the cats

WHILE my friend and I were shooting the breeze last Friday, I noticed our ceiling was already quite decrepit. One of the ceiling boards looked like it sagged in the middle part and was ready to fall anytime.

My friend, who repaired our stairway before, explained that the ceiling joists where the ceiling board was nailed to are already rotten. Whenever the cats walk across our ceiling, the nails could not hold the weight, and that’s why one of the ceiling boards is sagging in the middle, he added.

Before I continue, I should let you know that Crow’s Nest is really old. It was built during the “liberation” of the Philippines from the clutches of the Empire of Japan. It’s almost entirely made out of wood. Even the foundations are made of Narra unlike the houses of today which are made of concrete.

My friend offered two options to remedy my ceiling problem.

One, I could replace the whole ceiling construction with new wood for the rotten ceiling joists and replace the ceiling boards which are only 1/4” thick, with the sturdier 2” marine plywood.

Now, my friend said this will surely cost a lot. The materials and manpower, he added, could cost me at least P20 thousand. My friend also said there’s the time frame of the repairs to consider — his modest estimation was that it could take three weeks to replace the whole thing.

The problem is that I can’t spare that much money, I told my friend, plus I can’t expose my children to hazards of falling debris for three weeks.

He said there is another way. It is way cheaper and a helluva lot faster.

“You could just kill off all the cats,” my friend said with a sarcastic grin.

There was an awkward silence because we both realized we were solving my ceiling problem the way Digong Dada would with the drug problem and insurgency in the country.

If you still don’t get it, the ceiling problem is our country’s corrupted institutions, and the cats, well, it’s us, the Filipinos he swore to protect and love.

Of satires and lampoons

“Political satire is ridicule dedicated to exposing the difference between appearance and reality in public life.” -Robert Mankoff

THERE’S another kind of news circulating on social media platforms but it’s not fake. Far from it. It’s satire news.

However, you have to read it in order to appreciate it. You can’t appreciate satire if you’ll only read its “headline.”

I’m bringing this up in light of Sen. Joel Villanueva’s Senate Bill 1492 or “An Act Penalizing the Malicious Distribution of False News and Other Related Violations. It is a serious law.”

“The passage of this bill will encourage our citizens, especially public officers, to be more responsible and circumspect in creating, distributing and/or sharing news. Addressing national and global concerns should not be made more complicated by false news calculated to cause disunity, panic, chaos, and/or violence,” the bill’s explanatory note reads in part.

It carries a pretty heavy penalty for any thinking Pinoy (pun intended) found guilty–fines ranging from P100,000 to P5 million, and one to five years imprisonment.

Based on this proposed law, fake news is defined as “an information causing or tending to cause panic, division, chaos, violence, hate,” and those “exhibiting or tending to exhibit a propaganda to blacken or discredit one’s reputation.”

Therein lies the problem. The definition is vague. What about political satire? Can the law make that distinction? It’s like the “no bomb jokes” in terminals and airports. What if I tell a bomb poem, or a bomb limerick? Technically, it is not a bomb joke but can the security personnel make that distinction?

Merriam-Webster defines satire as “a way of using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, or bad. It is humor that shows the weaknesses or bad qualities of a person, government, or society.”

Satire is like the jester speaking truth to the king and his royal court. Let me remind you we have some of the most close-minded and “pikon” people in this administration. What will happen to the likes of Professional Heckler or the Superficial Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines when Villanueva’s bill is passed into law?

The communications team of this administration, nay spinners, scares the bejeesus out of me. They have a vast mass of followers but there is no informed political discourse in their brand of punditry. They present so much information on social media and pass it off as true, and they have the money and resources behind each and every article they post. Methinks, without satire, the entire public discourse in the republic will collapse.

I can’t even understand why this administration’s supporters are not so receptive of satirical pieces when their principal is the embodiment of sarcasm–hyperbole and all.

Alison Dagnes, a political science teacher at Shippensburg University, got it spot on when she wrote: “Political (satire) is primarily the mark of the underdog. It’s essentially a complaint against oppression. It’s a complaint against the power structure.”

Satire sharpens critique.

Of dubious loyalties

NO you’re not mistaken. I know this day isn’t scheduled for my column but I requested for this space because I have to get this rant off my chest.

Just this week, we carried a story on how Vice Mayor Raineir Joaquin Uy had to cut short a regular session of the city council because they no longer had a quorum.

Uy said councilors Lordan Suan, Leon Gan, and Yan Lam Lim were present at the start of their 42nd regular session on Monday but sneaked out in the middle of the plenary.

The three reportedly gave different reasons for cutting their attendance short. Suan said his stomach ached. Gan said a relative died so he excused himself from the session. Lim said he had to get out of the chamber because his blood pressure shot up.

Three different reasons but, to me, they still have a “common denominator” ? They’re all purples.

What got my goat was they were supposed to tackle timely issues during that session. As the disappointed councilor Bong Lao said, they were supposed to discuss the proposed flood and risk-reduction measures of the city.

I say timely because the government weather agency just declared that it’s now the rainy season. They even said to prepare for at least 14 storms until November. If  storm “Sendong” taught anything it is to prepare for worst.

Our city council has 18 members and 10 members would constitute a simple majority. At the start of the session, six of these “honorables” were absent.

Had these numbnuts stayed, the council still would have had a quorum and passed important resolutions.

Uy had no choice but to declare an end to the session because “since there were only nine left, anything that the city council approves can be legally questioned.”

These councilors should realize that their boss after the 2016 elections are the Kagay-anons and not that aging thing in Sta. Cecilia.

If Suan and Lim had a delicate constitution that day, they should have taken medicine for it. Hasn’t Suan heard of Diatabs, for chrissakes?! Newsflash, councilor, that’s what your JO is for! You could have just messaged that worker-relative of yours for medicine. Besides, don’t they realize the office of CDRRMC is directly below the plenary hall? That office is ready 24/7.

As for Gan, let’s just hope most of his relatives to the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity are healthy because, god forbid, he couldn’t attend sessions anymore.

You ran for office, gardemet! Do your part and serve the people who voted you in office and don’t be such a baby.

Uncreative non-fiction

“Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.” -Joseph Goebbels, Nazi party propagandist

I WOULD like to thank the Philippine News Agency for making this column a helluva lot easier to write by posting not one but two fake news articles. Now we have two articles to dissect which will be easier to separate truth from Goebbels-like propaganda.

I was thinking of sharing with you, my dear avid readers (Yes, all 250 of you), the things I learned at a seminar I attended last week. The seminar was about how to spot fake news. I prepared notes on the subject when PNA posted those fake news stories on their website.

This means that I might have to make this a two-part opinion piece. I will discuss and share tips on how to hunt for fake news on my second installment. But for now, let’s first tackle PNA’s latest foray into blatant disinformation.

Unfortunately for us, PNA took down the story and edited the fake news articles.

But good for us because many in the mainstream media (this paper included) screen grabbed the articles before PNA took down the article.

That’s good news for us because now, at least, we know PNA and the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) still feel “hiya.” Well, they should be, since their salaries are taxpayers’ money.

On May 15, PNA ran a story entitled: “95 nations in 3rd UPR convinced no EJKs in PHL.” The story, which ran for five days, claimed that 95 member-states who were present in the 27th Universal Period Review of the of the United Nations Human Rights Council believed in Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano’s report that there are no extrajudicial killings in the country.

Newly appointed Communications Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson wasted no time in posting the erroneous article on her blog on May 18. So the “crusading” blogger–who branded mainstream media “presstitutes”–now became an official “presstitute” of this administration by passing along an inaccurate article.

Vera Files checked its blog and found that as of May 20, at least 8,000 netizens had reacted and more than 900 gullible ones shared it.

The international council took notice of the erroneous article that it posted on its official Twitter account on May 19: “#UPR27 Clarification: To our best knowledge, 95 states were not convinced that EJK is non-existent.” The UN body then posted the full webcast of the UPR session.

The government news wires service took down the story on May 20 (may hiya rin pala) but not before posting a replacement story which is still inaccurate and also served to bolster Cayetano’s claim that the UPR was impressed with his report on the human rights situation in the country. The replacement story bears the odd title: “PHL’s human rights situation commended at UPR.”

So what did really happen at the 27th UPR? To answer this. I went to the international body’s website, www.upr-info.org. Here are samples of the real recommendations of the member-states:

• Further consolidate its national human rights infrastructure, including support to the Commission on Human Rights. (Egypt)
• Continue to improve its capacity to uphold human rights, including by increasing the Commission on Human Rights’ (CHR) fiscal autonomy and organizational capacity, as well as further efforts to prevent human rights violations by Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippines National Police personnel. (Australia)
• Continue to work as a matter of urgency to ensure that there are mechanisms to completely eliminate torture and extrajudicial killings, and to intensify its efforts to carry out investigations and prosecutions on extrajudicial killings and punish those responsible. (Trinidad and Tobago)
• Conduct independent and impartial inquiry in relation to all enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions and that the perpetrators of these crimes be brought to justice. (France)
• Work towards the complete elimination of torture and extrajudicial killings, and intensify efforts to carry out the prosecution of such crimes. (The Holy See) For the newbies: The Holy See means The Vatican.
• Further capacity building, such as through human rights education targeting government authorities, particularly law enforcement agencies, and an effective implementation of a national oversight mechanism. (Japan)
• Continue the work to build up the capacity in the area of human rights protection, including through strengthening the national human rights institution. (Russian Federation)

That last one should be a doozy, considering that President Rodrigo Duterte is visiting Russia this week.

For good measure, I also audited the database on the UPR website. I found that extrajudicial killings were mentioned 18 times. Human rights violation was cited 81 times in the 191 recommendations and 74 of which are recommendations that seek “general action” in the categories of action that need to be done. A general action is No. 4 in the action categories of the council. The action categories are: 1 – Minimal action 2 – Continuing action 3 – Considering action 4 – General action 5 – Specific action.

So there. Good luck with your lies and disinformation, PNA and PCOO.

Read, understand, react

“You can fool some people sometimes. But you can’t fool all the people, all the time.” -Bob Marley, Get up Stand up

I AM not a member of the national directorate of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines anymore. However, as a member of the union in the province, I am moved to reply to the responses of the Duterte siblings to the union’s statement.

In the statement, the union merely admonished Davao Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio and Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte on their personal attacks and veiled threats against a member of media, who in turn, only reminded colleagues of how to handle news of the death of the lone casualty of the attacks of Maoist rebels against facilities of Lapanday Foods Corp last week.

It would do well for the siblings to be reminded they’re not just spoiled brats of a kingpin mayor anymore. They are no ordinary persons for they are not only persons of power in their fiefdom, nay city, they are also presidential children.

“As a public official, she is subject to commentaries and criticisms especially from the press and should not respond with personal attacks and threats,” reads part of NUJP’s statement.

Hours after the release of the statement, Duterte-Carpio took to her social media again and responded: “National Union of Journalists in the Philippines. I too have a constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech and expression. The NUJP, my husband (Manases ‘Mans’ Carpio, Lapanday legal counsel), or even the President (Rodrigo Duterte) cannot shut me down. I will speak when I want to. Hahaha. Mamatay na kayo sa inis, sasagot pa rin ako.”

That response puzzled me since nowhere in the union’s statement did it state nor try to “shut down” the Davao mayor. I don’t know where the mayor got confused in the message considering most parts of the statement consisted of a direct quotation of the sibling’s tirade against a broadcaster.

As for her hot-headed macho brother, the vice mayor also took to his social media account and unfurled a string of off-tangent barely comprehensive tirade that sounded like a kid stripped of his favorite toy in the park by a bully.

“And again, let me reiterate ? Imo pakauwawan akoang pamilya, imong hilabtan nga wa man intawoy sala ninyo o sa publiko, bukbukon taka? Media man ka o bisan unsa ka pa. And dili tungod media ka, hawod na ka ug di na ka pwede hilabtan. Ayaw kabalaka kay di ko pareha anang uban nga momasaker,” the vice mayor response to the union’s statement.

Again, I am appalled at the response. I assume these public officials, elected servants at that, would know how to react to dissent or a public rebuke. Again, nowhere in the statement of the union did it try to shame the presidential family.

It called on their public statements which were uncalled for.

At first, I was tempted to chalk their off-tangent responses to poor comprehension skills. But, I realized there is something more sinister at play here.

It is something deliberate, something conscious, and something you develop through one’s years growing up–attitude.

It’s the attitude of entitlement which betrayed the siblings’ petulance and insolence veiled under the supposedly “masa” language. What is being displayed here is the attitude of the nouveau royalty. The impertinence of a fief lord against a serf.

It’s the attitude that bore such unfortunately popular lines: Do not bite the hand that feeds you and how dare you question the boss.

It’s a manipulative attitude. Goading their serfs to attack their fellow serfs by using the language of the serfs. It’s introspective victimization.

Filipinos are known to be melodramatic. The reason why teleseryes, where a muchacha is being ganged upon by the alta sociedad, thrive. This has worked so many times in our history. Erap used it but we all know how his administration ended, right?

So here’s an unsolicited advice: You can manipulate the people with your brand of rhetoric but you certainly cannot do that to all, all the time. Review history, ma’am and sir, and you’ll see it never ends well with despotic tyrants.

Public conversation

THE public conversation on corruption is bound to happen whoever is in power. Even the almighty Apo Ferdie couldn’t get under wraps. It is nothing personal. It is a conversation where the taxpayers hold to account those who swore to be true and at their service.

Forbes Magazine recently cited Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Index where the country slid back some six places in ranking – from an index of 134 in 2010 to 168. We are now neighbors with Pakistan and India in terms of level of corruption.

“President Duterte’s dramatic rise to power in the Philippines made extensive use of anti-corruption rhetoric. Yet, the impact of death squads, attacks on media, and violent intimidation to the detriment of democracy and democratic institutions is yet to be seen in 2017,” Transparency International’s observation reads in part.

Deflection must be the most useful tact in any self-respecting politician’s arsenal. Even the ones who claim they have nothing to hide.

As I see it, there is really no need for President Digong Dada to order the Anti-Money Laundering Council to “release” his bank account records because as the highest elected public official in the land every asset he and his family has, earned or inherited, should all reflect in all of his Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth. Yes, from when he was a non-crusading public prosecutor up to his winning the presidency of the Republic last year.

For the dense and ignorant, the submission of a SALN, as stipulated in Republic Act 6713, is a prerequisite of all public officials and employees – sans those in an honorary capacity, laborers, casuals, and temporary workers –upon assumption to office and on or before April 30 of every year in government service. Public officials are also required to file a SALN within 30 days after separation from government service.

“The SALN lists the properties – real estate, vehicles, jewelry, shares of stock, etc. – that an official has acquired or owns, when, at what cost, and their current market values. The SALN also enrolls the official’s liabilities such as loans, including those from government institutions (read: GSIS) and insurance payments. The SALN should list as well the names of the official’s wife and children below 18, and the names of the official’s relatives in government service up to the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity,” our codigo cum notebook when I was with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reads.

So when Sen. Antonio Trillanes brought up Duterte’s supposedly suspicious fat bank accounts I was surprised that the latter’s initial response was childish name-calling and insults. The next day, as if sobered up, ordered the AMLC to “release all his bank records.” A little digression for the online trolls and fanatics, I agree that Trillanes looks creepy. Well, they both look sinister as fudge to me. But looks and gut feel has got nothing to do with the Trillanes-Duterte to-and-fro (which basically is turning out to be a b-version of a Star Wars saga).

If Duterte has nothing to hide he need simply point Trillanes to all of his SALNs. This, of course, has a lot of conjectures attached to that statement. That is assuming Duterte faithfully and honestly filed SALNs in all the years of his career as a public servant. There’s the assumption, too, that he really advocates for transparency and accountability in public service – and so on and so forth.

Trillanes’ accusations should also not come as a surprise for Duterte considering the former comptroller of the Navy’s acquisition division already filed a plunder case last year. A second attack, as it were, was bound to happen. Like a rat that got wind of a rotting cheese, it will pursue it no matter what. Trillanes will not back down. He has already drawn first blood.

Whichever sides of the fence you are sitting, Trillanes’ accusations is primarily a call for transparency. If he has shady practices in the Senate then these should also be investigated on – as pointed out by the Fifth Estate (Duterte’s barrage of spin doctors). Too bad, Trillanes beat Duterte to hurling accusations first.

This also brings to fore the need for a public conversation on the alleged corruption under the Duterte administration which was bound to happen as with the past presidents of the Republic.

So, no VG, this is not about whether I’m opposed to this administration or not. This is not about the person. This is about us – yes, including you – pulling our heads out of our asses and start asking the really ugly questions that need to be asked.

We cannot just sweep the conversation under the rug, so to speak.