Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno’s observation that the spin doctors have taken over the matter of political choice for 2016 is a sad commentary on the state of Philippine politics.
“Truth is the first victim of spin doctors”, the highly respected jurist remarked while pushing for his advocacy of system change, a shift from unitary-presidential into a federal-parliamentary system.
Now comes my friend Reli German, the guy who “spun” then Senator and later Vice-President Erap’s perceived inelegant English (I say perceived because the guy, while not necessarily “Arrneow-spokening”, can hold his own in English discourse) into Erap jokes that charmed the middle class while maintaining his hold on the “masa” vote.
Reli explains, in defense of his trade, that PR practitioners and strategists based their work “largely on information and briefings supplied to them.” PR gurus describe their profession as “truth well told”.
Reli has a point. When a “spin doctor” portrays his principal before the public eye so differently from his accepted “persona”, or how the public at large knows and accepts him to be, the result is often a PR flop.
I do not know, and do not care to know, who for instance tried to “endear” Mar Roxas to the masa by making him “padyak” a tricycle in what looked like imported loafers when he was being packaged for the presidency in 2009. I was vacationing in the Ilocos with friends and family when I first chanced upon the TV ad in my hotel room at the Fort Ilocandia. I consider Mar a friend, and the first thing I did was call someone in his inner circle and asked why in tarnation they came up with such an unbelievable spin. He could only mumble, a bit flustered I guess, that they did sufficient FGDs before they launched what was hoped to be a prize-winning ad.
“As always in these kinds of political exercises, the first victim is the truth,” CJ Puno observed. In fine, what you see is not what you will get.
In school, we ourselves were taught a lot of hogwash in Philippine history, written by illiterates, or rather, literati blinded by their patrons. That America came to the Philippines as an “altruistic” colonizer, for instance. Bullsh*t.
Ramon Magsaysay may have been a great president and a good man, but the CIA-written “spin” was that he defeated a “bad” president in the person of Elpidio Quirino, unfairly tarnished by such outright lies as the tale of the golden orinola and the 5,000-peso (at that time a princely sum) brass bed.
Intelligent Filipinos now recognize Apo Pidiong as one of our best presidents. In his own dignified manner, he stood up for Philippine interests, first as Roxas’ foreign affairs secretary, and later as president, and initiated most of the infrastructure that until today lasts, and have improved the economic landscape of the nation. The man retired to a modest house in then largely-forested Novaliches, and his heirs are not wallowing in wealth. Too bad Quirino did not have any “spin doctors”.
My good friend Greg Garcia, who is immortalized in local advertising history as the man behind the marketing success of Banco Filipino (before the financial geniuses behind it over-stretched their luck), with his “Subok na Matibay, Subok na Matatag” descriptive of the everybody’s bank, once prefaced a presentation to a common principal thus:
“Tell me a fact, and I will listen.
“Tell me a truth and I will believe.
“Tell me a story, and it will live forever in my heart”.
Greg attributed this to an Indian proverb. And nothing best describes what PR “strategists” and communications people do.
The questions that spin-meisters like Reli German often try to elicit about their client, whether paying or “gratis et amore”, is whether they have true to life stories to tell. How they “spin” the stories into “tales” depend on whether the told stories are closest or farthest from the truth.
The rule of thumb should be: never alter the principal’s real persona to the point where the public will doubt the veracity of your claims.
Spinning is all about making a story about the truth. When you weave tales out of whole cloth, that is, when you spin a lie and hope to make it into spin-a-win, oftentimes, you falter. Never, ever—insult your audience.
Presidential campaign history is littered with the corpses of failed attempts because outright lies or exaggerated half-truths are discovered for what they truly are.
What spin doctors do is try to veer the debate in the public mind to the area where his candidate is most acceptable, and farther from the issues where he is vulnerable.
Now, how would a communicator try to veer away Veep Jojo from the issues thrown against him by Alan and Sonny, Koko and the Ombudsman herself? By showing pictures and footages of him eating with bare hands in a public market? That’s been done before. Monching Mitra was once shown casting a net into the sea, and in fact he did it so well the ad director was impressed. Monching truly knew what it was like to be poor, and had to scrounge for a living in Aborlan, Palawan just to keep body and soul together in his orphaned youth. But somehow, the images did not sell, because as Speaker of the trapos in the HOR, he became the personification of the trapo in the public mind. Unfair, but that is how campaigns go.
Again I wonder why the real Mar is not allowed to come out in his public imaging. The latest I have seen is all about purveying the same script of “daang matuwid”, with Mar wearing a yellow shirt and behind him is a sea of yellow drapery. Think of something original, guys.
I used to advise Mar, “gratis et amore”, when he was a congressman after his brother Dinggoy’s death. The guy has charm. He is intelligent. Sure, he often analyzes issues too much, maybe a habit he imbibed from years as an investment banker in New York and here. But he is a good man. He can’t help it that he was born rich, though.
I admired him more when I offered him a senatorial slot in Erap’s 1998 presidential run, as a “guest candidate” because we knew he would never abandon his Liberal Party. He declined, because Tita Cory and the LP had endorsed Fred Lim for president. I told him Fred would not win over Erap, and while he agreed, he quietly toed the party decision of which he was not a part.
Now look at the present landscape. Ask yourselves: who is presenting himself/herself as truly himself/herself?
Binay who wants to pit the poor against the rich? Mar who wants to be PNoy Part Two? Grace who wants people to remember the reel hero FPJ, who was deprived of his election a dozen years back by Garci on behest of GMA? Digong who admits strong-hand tactics in squaring off with hardened criminals in his Davao? Bongbong who re-incarnates his dad, the perhaps misunderstood yet achieving authoritarian? Ping the police chief who has re-invented himself as the independent budget expert who abjures pork in all its manifestations?
Let us see how the spin masters spin their wins. Or end up with egg all over their faces.