How to survive at the Palace 'snake pit'

The reported plans of Malacañang Palace to reorganize the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) have been stalled as of this writing. The OPS would be the first government agency to be overhauled in the first 100 days of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III (P-Noy). The planned reorganization of the OPS was first announced by P-Noy on the eve of his assumption into office on June 30 when he presented to media the composition of his Cabinet team.

The OPS was re-created during the term of P-Noy’s late mother, former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino. She named the late Teodoro “Teddyman” Benigno, bureau chief then of the AFP, a French news wire agency, as her first press secretary. In an Executive Order issued by Mrs. Aquino — upon the recommendation of Benigno — the OPS was restored in 1987 out of the defunct Ministry of Information during the martial law regime in the country.

As it was originally restored by Benigno, the OPS had control and supervision over the Philippine Information Agency (PIA), the National Printing Office (NPO), the Philippine News Agency (PNA), government TV station Channel 4, the Philippine Broadcast Service (PBS) that runs the Radyo ng Bayan, and the sequestered TV stations Channels 9 and 13. Unfortunately, the Press Secretary was emasculated through the years and lost much of these agencies that were taken out of his jurisdiction.

That was the original set-up during that period that I started to cover the Palace beat in 1986 when I came to know now retired assistant press secretary Carmen “Tita Ching” Suva. After having spent 42 years working at the Palace until she retired in 2004, Tita Ching came out with a book of her personal memoirs of her being up close and personal to the six Presidents of the Republic and 20 press secretaries whom she served as an OPS staff.

Tita Ching chronicled in her book some of the vignettes she remembered through the years from the time she first worked at the Palace at age 21 in 1962 as personal secretary at the OPS then headed by Rufino Hechanova who was the first press secretary of the late President Diosdado Macapagal. It was during the term of his daughter, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo when Titang Ching retired from government service as press undersecretary.

So Tita Ching aptly entitled her book: “From Macapagal to Macapagal-Arroyo, My 42 years inside Malacañang.” She had the book launching last week which was attended by no less than former President Fidel V. Ramos and now Congresswoman, ex-President Arroyo, and some of the former press secretaries and my former colleagues at the Malacañang Press Corps.

Speaking from her wealth of experience, Tita Ching was quoted as praising P-Noy in conducting a no-holds-barred first press conference with the MPC last week at the Palace that almost went on for an hour and a half. As the former head of the Palace’s Media Relations, Tita Ching noted that P-Noy’s openness will endear him to the media and not just the MPC. She wished P-Noy would continue with his kind of working relations with media that has the natural function of being adversarial whoever is in power. 

At the outset, P-Noy bared his concept of appointing a communications director instead of naming a press secretary. The latest official words from the Palace have it that an EO is still being drafted to carry out the restructuring of the government’s chief information agency into an Office of Communications Group.

Methinks, P-Noy should retain the term “Press Secretary”. After all, freedom of the press is one of the living legacies of his late mother's leadership that enshrined this in our country’s Constitution. Come to think of it, framers of our Constitution did not find merit to use the word “communications” in the press freedom provision in our country’s democratic framework. 

In broad strokes, P-Noy disclosed he would like to bring to the Palace the people who were behind the communications group that handled his media/press requirements during the presidential campaign. His campaign communications group was headed by cousin Maria Montelibano, who once headed the Radio/TV Malacañang (RTVM). From Montelibano up to the present set-up, the RTVM operates like an “independent republic” outside OPS control and has its own annual budget. Since Montelibano is a relative, P-Noy has repeatedly declared he is not inclined to appoint her to his planned new government communications office.

Pending the creation of this new Palace communications body, P-Noy appointed newsman Rey Marfil as assistant press secretary. Marfil became a close friend of P-Noy while the former was still covering him at the Senate as reporter and columnist of Abante Tonight. He was one of the so-called “embedded” journalists who covered his presidential campaign.

To date, P-Noy has named several of his campaign communications group to this planned new body to replace the OPS. They include ANC news anchor Ricky Carandang and Manuel “Manolo” Quezon III, his fellow worker at the Lopez-owned TV cable channel news, and another newspaper columnist Herminio “Sonny” Coloma. P-Noy admitted these media persons helped him during the presidential campaign.

As I understood it, there were so many fragmented blocs within that communications group of the Liberal Party (LP) during the campaign. So much so, Sen. Mar Roxas II, P-Noy’s vice presidential candidate, got embroiled in their conflict. I would not dwell on it because a number of opinion columnists who were also involved in the LP campaign have written so much about the intramurals they had during those times.

The delay in the formation of P-Noy’s communications group is reportedly because of the acrimonious struggle over control of the government’s propaganda machinery. The OPS has a budget of around P3 billion for 2010.

Last night, P-Noy hosted at the Palace an informal dinner with reporters and photographers who are all covering him now. Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda was quoted as saying P-Noy wanted to sound them out about how the new set-up would be and perhaps listen to their inputs. Lacierda vehemently denied the rumored internal struggles taking place at this early stage of P-Noy’s communications group.

The chapter on Tita Ching’s book about how she survived the so-called “snake pit” at the Palace is a must reading for them.