Factoring the meltdown of PNoy's rating - I

Let’s string along TF’s current weekly query on what caused the decline of PNoy’s popular rating. The topic opens probabilities – and guesswork – why the high mark at the inception and during the usual honeymoon period nosedived and shrunk to a double-digit drop.

Palace spokesman Edwin Lacierda conveniently blames the comments of columnists or opinion writers. He thus exhorted the latter to “check your facts,” clearly implying that the columnists’ acerbic criticisms of President Noynoy have not been factual, as in “manufactured” by the pundits. With tongue in cheek, Lacierda suggested that columnists should sit down with the president to know first-hand his policies and programs, so that, by such “constant exposure” comparable to reporters on Palace beat, might help the pundits’ accuracy.

 But then, the President himself doused cold water on Lacierda’s censure on the opinion writers, by owning the need for some “fine-tuning” of his Communications Group for “failing to inform the public of the good developments in his administration.”

Not to counter with his own Palace boss, Lacierda quickly confirmed the need for the Communications Group – Lacierda’s press personnel and that of Secretary Ricky Carandang – to coordinate with the Cabinet to ensure that good developments reach the public and “push more the good news on a very, very regular basis… the output of the Cabinet departments.”

  Forced to eat a piece of a rotting pie he has dished out against the columnists, Lacierda and the communications group could be the main cause of the dipping President’s popularity rating. This blatant failure to forge unison news thrust from the Palace is a tremendous gap, perhaps bigger than the existing factions of the “Bahay” and the “Samar” group rivalry.

 Besides, while a lawyer of no mean capability, Lacierda appears to have lost track of what the in-depth role of the columnists. Definitely, they are not news reporters who have to stick to the objective facts of certain newsworthy events, as well as on grammatical usage, or slant the actual details. Columnists have greater leeway and wider perspective in treating the subject, and in interpreting it, and using varied approaches and varied expressions, such that, to the “shallow” reader, his style could be not hewing strictly to the facts. Like a literary critic, an opinion writer is after verisimilitude – the appearance of being true – so as to attain credibility and effectiveness, not necessarily on the literal truth, but on such verity to be fundamentally true.

 Thus, opinion writers have free use of idioms that even defy grammar, opt for variety in their turns of phrases, utilize the various figures of speech, such as, metaphor more often, simile, irony, hyperbole or exaggeration, metonymy, to name some; and, a lot of elision or omission of words or phrases which a discerning reader can mentally supply and understand.

 Another vital cause for the President’s popularity decline within his first year tenure was the inescapable effect of the learning process of any administration, whether for national governance or for LGUs. The popular concept of the first 100 days honeymoon period holds neophyte administrators who commit errors, exempt from criticism. On a national level, the honeymoon period could stretch to the entire first year of trial and error.

 Except for his stint as Senator, Noynoy doesn’t have any experience in governance, ample enough to have oriented him before assuming the presidency, so broad and complicated. Tersely said, PNoy as the president could just be better than a fresh cub scout – far from being an eagle scout – and had yet to learn a lot of lessons and a lot of tricks in governance.

 For one, his choice of the people and advisers with enough experience, ability, and trustworthiness posed very vital. Cabinet secretaries and their staff, the GOCCs and NFIs high echelon, and similar appointed positions left much to be desired, as it turned out. Candidly, the initial criterion could have been more on the political background so as to repay political debts. In fact, as expected, political or party loyalty has been invoked or involved in filling positions, and in dispensing discipline.

(To be continued)