No spin doctor for Duterte

If there is one big advantage that could best prepare a press secretary, it is having once been in the journalism profession. It is a plus factor being a former member of media to be more effective as a press secretary. This is especially important if the press secretary will work for a tough-talking and no-holds-barred personality like former Davao City mayor and now President Rodrigo Duterte.

I am not saying being a former journalist could make one a better press secretary. But it would help a lot for anybody appointed to this Cabinet post to perform such tasks. The press secretary serves as the communications link of the President to the people whom the chief executive had sworn to serve.

Thus, newly installed Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar can draw a lot from his own experience in private media where he came from before President Duterte named him to this post. Andanar was among the first appointees of the former Davao City mayor when the president-elect was forming his Cabinet team.

A former journalist himself, Andanar was working as one of the news anchors at TV5 before President Duterte named him to his Cabinet. The 40-year-old Andanar is one of the two youngest Duterte Cabinet members, the other being 38-year-old Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Mark Villar.

Incidentally, Andanar and Villar are related by affinity. Andanar’s wife Alelee Aguilar Andanar is the daughter of Las Piñas Mayor Vergel “Nene” Aguilar who happens to be the brother of Mark’s mother, Sen. Cynthia Villar.

Now that he has jumped to the other side of the fence, Andanar also counts on a lot of support from his former media colleagues. Of course not at all times but at least to give him a “honeymoon” in the first 100 days of the Duterte administration.

Knowing the pulse and mind of working journalists, Andanar gave us the first glimpse of the accomplishments of the new administration on the eve of the launching of the PCOO report on first 50 days in office of President Duterte. Andanar announced them during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay at Cafe Adriatico in Remedios Circle in Malate last Wednesday. We had a lively exchange in our weekly breakfast forum with Andanar who was never offensive and neither was he defensive of the Duterte administration.

Offhand, I think Andanar will do a good job as press secretary even as he has to live with the title he inherited as “Communications Secretary.” At the forum, he disclosed plans of streamlining the office and possibly to bring back under his supervision the other attached OPS agencies that were spread out to the two other offices created by the previous administration.

At present though, Andanar noted many of these offices like PTV-4, Philippine News Agency (PNA), Bureau of Broadcast Services-Radyo ng Bayan, and the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) have no agency heads yet. He is awaiting the appointments of these agency heads from President Duterte.

From my own personal experience as a journalist who covered four presidents at Malacañang Palace (except former President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III), it is really a plus factor if the press secretary is not only media-savvy but also once a media professional. 

Former New York Times correspondent Alice Villadolid was the first press secretary and concurrent presidential spokesperson during the transition into power of the late President Corazon Aquino. Villadolid was subsequently replaced by the late press secretary Teodoro Benigno who left his lucrative job as bureau chief here in Manila of the Agence France Presse to join the Aquino Cabinet.

But the function of presidential spokesperson was taken out from his job description and transferred directly under the Office of the President. It was during Benigno’s tenure that the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) was first created out of the government propaganda machinery of the ousted regime of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.

Like the rest of Cabinet officials, the press secretary is the President’s “alter ego” and they speak on behalf of the Chief Executive. But the press secretary – if the presidential spokesman is not available – serves also as the official mouthpiece of the President for all matters under the executive department.

Benigno used to tell us much younger Palace reporters that he was merely acting as the “pool” reporter in official meetings not open for media coverage and other closed-door meetings of Mrs. Aquino. And to his credit, he lived up to his job until he felt burned out after four years in his Cabinet post and rejoined the private media. He went to The STAR as political columnist until his death in June, 2005.

When former President Fidel Ramos assumed office in June, 1992, he appointed seasoned journalist Rodolfo Reyes as press secretary for two years. Subsequent press secretaries of Ramos also came from private media like the late Malaya columnist Jesus “Jess” Sison, and “Ang Balita” editor-in-chief Marcelo Lagmay.

But it was only Reyes, who passed away earlier this year, who had the honor of serving as press secretary to two former Presidents. Reyes was also appointed press secretary during the term of former President Joseph Estrada in June, 1998.

The Manila Bulletin editor-in-chief Crispulo “Jun” Icban had the distinction of being the last OPS Secretary during the remaining year in office of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

When P-Noy took over in June, 2010, his campaign media bureau operators recast and subdivided the OPS into three entities. And one of it was PCOO and appointed Herminio Coloma as its secretary. Also created was the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO), and the Office of the Presidential Spokesperson.

Initiating the changes in government led by President Duterte, Andanar started his own at the PCOO. He reduced its name by one “O” and is now called PCO.

More changes will be implemented at the PCO in line, he cited, with President Duterte’s “right-sizing” the government and trimming the fat off the bureaucracy.

As Communications Secretary, Andanar believes his job is to become an enabler, not a spin doctor, of President Duterte’s policies being communicated in real time down to Filipinos all over the country.