“Since everyone now sees that the president and his first lady are most comfortable with Anthony Taberna, why not make him the fifth press secretary?”
“WHAT we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” Dragline, played by George Kennedy says before he pushes the movie hero Paul Newman into a hole in that movie classic Cool Hand Luke.
I listened to PBbM’s Podcast # 1, with Anthony Taberna, shown a week after the May 12 elections where unpredictably, two “pinklawan” senators won, and five of the Alyansa’s prized candidates bit the dust against Inday Sara’s five.
Five-five-two, although for some funny reason, the Alyansa deludes itself into saying it is six. Or maybe they think that because of the Villar’s business empire, they will pull senator-elect Camille hither and thither?
The other problem of the Bagong Pilipinas slate is that except for Erwin Tulfo, those who won are “luma,” as in vintage wine, who may not necessarily follow Malacanang if it calls for a “somos o no somos” edict.
“How do you solve a problem like Ping Lacson?” and sing that to the tune of the musical “The Sound of Music”? Maybe Tito Sotto would go “somos” in the hope that he would be once again Senate President, and Lito Lapid who would reprise his role as head of the “Comite de Silencio.” But Pia Cayetano?
No matter how you slice it, Bagong Pilipinas took a hit, just as the poll research firms have egg splattered over their faces.
Which realization is not lost to the palace. After a week of silence broken only by the revelations from campaign manager Toby Tiangco, discounting the useless babble from Claire Castro, the president asks Anthony Taberna to converse with him in a podcast, the first in three years.
Within that time frame, musical chairs played in the office of the press secretary, from Atty. Trixie Angeles to Atty. Cheloy Garafil to Cesar Chavez and now the unseen and unheard Jay Ruiz.
Without directly saying “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” the president virtually admitted that bad politics trumped governance in his first three years.
It is half-time and playing catch up against the tsunami of public sentiment evidenced by the strong showing of the opponent is not an easy task.
He said they were focused on the big “legacy” projects, forgetting the ordinary man’s plight as he suffers from the daily grind of high prices, heavy traffic and inefficient services.
What big projects, I wondered. That subway project started by Duterte won’t be finished by 2028 as promised, with Vince Dizon realistically saying the best would be past the Marcos administration. What, pray tell are those big legacy projects that this government actually began?
All we see in the landscape are road re-blocking, slope netting, roadside protectors, cat’s eyes and river dredging, all characterized by tons and tons of graft and corruption (Mayor Benjie Magalong, thank you and congratulations! You give us hope against corrupt politics).
Ah, not to forget, 20-peso rice, finally after three years! The president says it is because of higher paddy field production, but hey, the increase is extremely marginal, most of it thanks to the recent weather.
And huge subsidies that will cost all taxpayers plenty, for an optical illusion too few could experience and foolhardy to sustain.
But the president said, the good things his government has done are not known widely and well, to which Taberna nodded. In fine, what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
Now if that is the palace mindset, may we humbly give an unsolicited advice:
Since everyone now sees that the president and his first lady are most comfortable with Anthony Taberna, why not make him the fifth press secretary?
Then we will not have to doubt whether Claire Castro’s daily pronouncements are the president’s or hers only, with her opinions distorting proper information dissemination.
Taberna, popularly called Ka Tunying, could also “educate” Malacanang and even the fisheries magnate presiding over agriculture on the true plight of palay farmers, he being from the rice granary of the country, Nueva Ecija.
Taberna could be both press secretary and presidential spokesman, as he has access to and comfy relations with the power centers in the palace, apart from experience in broadcast and even social media that dwarfs those of the present Malacanang communicators.
For the record, I have not spoken to Taberna in ages.
This piece of unsolicited advice is done with constructive purpose, to lift the albatross upon the president’s neck, though even a Taberna could not get Inday Sara to break bread with the man who, wittingly or unwittingly, broke the “uniteam” they bred.