MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino has finally signed the executive order that reorganized the Office of the Press Secretary into the Presidential Communications Group, which will have two secretaries with co-equal Cabinet rank.
Former transportation undersecretary Herminio Coloma will be heading the operations side while former broadcast journalist Ricky Carandang will take charge of the development and strategic planning office.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda could not say, however, who between the two will be undergoing confirmation at the powerful Commission on Appointments and who will be defending the agency’s budget for 2011.
“That will have to be studied, and we have already consulted Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on the matter. It is because by tradition, and prior to the late President Cory Aquino’s term, secretaries were never confirmed,” the law professor told a Palace briefing.
Earlier though, Lacierda told reporters the Presidential Communications Group will have two separate budgets for its two co-equal secretaries, apparently an unprecedented move since it is only one government agency.
“To the best of my knowledge, in all likelihood, there will be two budgets that will be sent to Congress – one for the messaging group (of Carandang) and the other for the dissemination group (of Coloma),” he said in a briefing.
Until now, however, no one – neither Carandang, Coloma nor Lacierda, who belongs to the Communications Group but has a Cabinet rank and is under the Office of the President (OP) – could categorically answer who will defend the agency’s budget.
As per Executive Order 4, Coloma will have two undersecretaries (one for operations and the other for special concerns), two assistant secretaries (one for operations and another for media relations).
All government-owned media will also be under his jurisdiction, among them the News and Information Bureau, Philippine News Agency (PNA), Philippine Information Agency (PIA), IBC-13, RPN-9, NBN-4, RTVM, Bureau of Broadcast Services, Bureau of Communications Services, National Printing Office (NPO), APO Production Unit and OP Web Development Office.
Carandang, for his part, will have a deputy head, one undersecretary in the person of historian Manuel Quezon III, a chief of staff, an assistant secretary for messaging and an electronic data processing (EDP) division chief.
Agencies that will fall under his turf are the Presidential Message Staff, OP Correspondence Office, Media Research and Development Staff, Presidential Museum and Library, Official Gazette and Speech Writers Group.
Carandang’s tasks include coordinating the messaging system with the OP, ensuring consistency in messages of the executive department, liaising with Malacañang Records Office, assisting in research and development of new media instruments;
Taking charge of the design and recommend responses to relative issues, formulation of editorial guidelines for state media, perform editorial functions for the gazette, act as custodian of the institutional memory of the OP, and ensuring consistency of the executive department’s corporate identity.