The ghost writers

Malacañang's flip-flopping on that "crisis statement" delivered by President Estrada at the recent National Prayer Breakfast is truly terrible. It is going to give more headaches to the President and his handlers as they try to stop the further erosion of his image and popularity ratings. Apparently, some people in Malacañang goofed somewhere.

President Estrada's "crisis statement" at the National Prayer Breakfast was very clear. It had no room for doubt, for ifs and buts. Thus, it is almost impossible for him to have been misquoted.

There are speculations on why the flip-flop happened. Apparently, President Estrada was not thoroughly briefed on the speech prepared for him for the Prayer Breakfast. Probably, he did not have enough time to analyze the contents of the speech. And no one in Malacañang must have given him a briefing on the various sentences and paragraphs of his prepared speech.

That is the trouble with the teleprompter. When one becomes so used to using it, one will, sooner or later, merely read what is being fed into the machine, not realizing that a sentence or a paragraph is going to have adverse repercussions. Such a situation can be aborted if there is a pre-delivery brainstorming on the speech draft, between the "ghost" writer and the person delivering the speech, a few days before the appointed date.

Now, who was the "ghost" writer who prepared the draft of President Estrada's speech at the Prayer Breakfast? Was there a discussion of that draft between him and the President? And did anyone in Malacañang, probably the Presidential Management Staff, take the trouble of analyzing what the contents of the draft? If none of this was done, then that was a really big disservice to President Estrada.

During the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal, it was the Office of the Press Secretary that was in charge of gathering various speech drafts from different "ghost" writers, analyzing them, and eventually turning them over to the President's immediate staff. As one of the speechwriters for President Macapagal, I surmised that the drafts were read and reread by the President himself.

Note that in the speech drafts I prepared, President Macapagal himself, in his own handwriting, inserted words, sentences, and corrections in the margins or other blank spaces in the drafts. After the Macapagal presidency, I kept the drafts with President Macapagal's annotations and corrections, knowing that they would eventually become of historical value.

Unfortunately, in 1996, when I was looking for a new job, a ranking official asked me to show him some of my works. And I made the mistake of giving him the original copies of the speech drafts I prepared for President Macapagal. I was never to see the drafts again. The ranking official was assigned a foreign post. And when I eventually had the chance to see him again, he could no longer remember having received any papers from me. That is how I lost my own personal documents that are now of historical value.

I wonder how the speech drafts for President Estrada are being handled, prior to the President's delivery of the speech. Who is in charge? Is the President given enough time to read and analyze the drafts? And are there pre-delivery briefings for him? The answers to these questions could well provide the key to solving the President's recurring flip-flopping problem.

Last January 16, at about 7 p.m., while my car was cruising the northbound vehicular underpass at the Shaw Boulevard crossing, my driver and I suddenly heard a loud thud, as though a big rock had hit the underportion of my car. A few minutes later, we felt the car quiver. It was a flat tire.

Since we were at the lowest portion of the underpass, I instructed my driver to drive on, towards the mouth of the underpass, right in front of the SM Megamall, but at the inner lane of EDSA. There we stopped, where the flat tire was to be replaced, and with buses and other vehicles whizzing by at both sides of my car. It took my driver almost an hour to change the tire, because the place was dark and because of the perilous place we were in.

You know what? Based on how the tire looked, when it was brought to a vulcanizing shop, the object that punctured my tire was bigger than a nail. And it was a terribly sharp object. And that object came at the inner lane of EDSA, apparently part of the debris from the construction work undertaken at EDSA.

This brings to the fore the need for the authorities concerned to demand that the contractors of road projects clean up their places of work, after the job is finished. Demand that they remove the nails, the metal slabs, and other debris from the job sites. This is part of public service.

Here are excerpts of letters I received during the past few days:

MIKE C. BOLOS, P.O. Box 41726, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: "I read your column about the Philippine Forum. With all the heavyweights representing the cross-section of society, it appears that the OFWs were not represented. This is a pity because the OFWs form a significant part of our society, and need to be really heard."

Dr. RAFAEL E. RODRIGUEZ, Medical Plaza Makati Suite 2008, Amorsolo St., Makati: "It is really inspiring to know that our young leaders have gathered their hearts and minds to come up with viable solution to our great challenges. You noted attendees from various sectors. Was there, by any chance, a health worker or an MD to represent the health sector? Considering this is one of our greatest problems, I cannot imagine a convention without valuable inputs from experts in the field of health care. If health is our wealth, then surely the conveyors would have needed some help from this sector of society."

IRMA R. GOMEZ, Pasig City: "It's hard to please the politicians who keep on criticizing Secretary Lim. Why can't they just shut up first and watch how Lim works? It's good we have someone like Lim who has the guts to stamp out crime in our society."

Art A. Borjal's e-mail address: <[email protected]>