The perils of a spokesman

Sonny Coloma and I go back many years… the early ’80s to be exact. I actually first met Sonny more than 30 years ago when we constituted the core group that organized the Philippine chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). He was at that time with the HR Group of the then Far East Bank and I was with Petron. I remember attending a regional conference of IABC with him in Hong Kong.

When Sonny started to teach at the Asian Institute of Management, he would invite me from time to time to talk about the practice of corporate relations. We lost touch after EDSA as he went on to become an undersecretary in the Cory era DOTC.

If I am frustrated about the way the current DOTC has fumbled its mission, I am sure that Sonny is even more so because he is familiar with the agency. I imagine Sonny cringing every time he has to defend DOTC for one fumble after another because Sonny knows the guys there could have done better.

Such is the peril of being a spokesman. Whether in government or the private sector, having to speak on behalf of a company or government, the perils are the same. You are obligated to present the best foot forward of your client. How you select the details to reveal will enhance or obfuscate the public’s understanding of an issue as you intended.

Jerry Barican, my good friend from way back in our high school days who was Erap’s presidential spokesman, once observed that two years is the maximum amount of time a person can effectively serve in that function. By the second year, Jerry said, you start losing whatever credibility you started with.

Maybe that’s why Sonny became more visible about a year ago as Malacanang spokesman. His job managing the many agencies under what used to be the Office of the Press Secretary should have kept him busy enough. But Sonny had to come to the rescue because Edwin Lacierda and Abigail Valte were starting to suffer the syndrome Jerry Barican warned about.

Lacierda and Valte were starting to feel the pressure and were getting testy a little more often than usual. I am sure they don’t mean to be as sarcastic and emotionally clueless as their boss. But sometimes it can’t be helped.

Indeed, I remember welcoming Sonny’s more courteous and humble responses even to impertinent questions that normally deserved insulting responses.

But in the last few months, even Sonny was starting to show his irritation as in his Marie Antoinette-like “if you don’t like the long lines at the MRT, take the bus” comment. Unfortunately, in the game we play with our politicians and national leaders, ang pikon ay talo! 

 The most difficult job of the spokesman is the obligation to defend a position that he knows to be wrong. It would be good if he had the benefit of discussing a controversial issue with the President before he faces the news media representatives.

Worse, the Malacanang spokesman is expected to defend the entire government even if it is against his better judgment. The alternative is an image of a government at odds with itself.

Take this issue about rice prices which poor Sonny had to defend early this week. He was forced to say the P2/kilo increase in rice prices is only temporary and prices of rice will stabilize soon. Worse, Sonny had to mouth the excuse of the Department of Agriculture and the National Food Authority (NFA) that the increase in rice prices is due to “market forces” or the law of supply and demand.

I can almost imagine Sonny biting his tongue because he knows the DA and NFA are bullshitting the public. So Sonny took a step back and subtly attributed the excuse to the proper parties. Note how he referred to “they”.

“They believe that once harvest and planting season start, the supply of rice will increase and push down prices,” he said over state-run dzRB.

Tell us something we don’t know! But tell us too why the NFA didn’t have enough buffer stock to prevent this sort of thing from happening this year?

Stabilizing prices is NFA’s reason for being… simply put, it has failed to meet its mission. We are spending billions of pesos every year so NFA will always have the ability to influence the price of rice through the lean months.

Those of us who buy rice as retail customers know the prices are a lot higher than the P2/kilo NFA is saying. I suspect that even Sonny knows the DA and the NFA is painting a rosier picture than warranted.

The real story is in the number of days inventory. But it seems it is somewhat worse than they are ready to admit. The country’s rice stock, according to them, remains sufficient for 74 days as of May… worse now. Stocks in households remain sufficient for 39 days and those held in commercial warehouses for 21 days.

Stocks held in NFA depositories would last for 14 days. Just two weeks in so called strategic stockpile at the NFA? All that must be gone by now since it had been two weeks since May ended. This confirms the fears expressed by my colleague, Jarius Bondoc, that anomalies in the recent procurement of imported rice from Vietnam are delaying arrival of the commodity.

Curiously, they are claiming that of the present rice stock inventory, 52.6 percent is held in households, 28.9 percent is in commercial warehouses and 18.5 percent in NFA depositories. More than half in households? You and I know that’s ridiculous because very few of our households can afford to stockpile rice.

Sonny Coloma must have been torn by this issue. On the one hand he doesn’t want to create undue panic and aggravate the situation by admitting there is a shortage. He would also rather not suggest the DA Secretary and the NFA people have failed because that reflects on his boss who has so far refused to take more decisive action on the non-performing agriculture officials.

He also cannot say that the shortage can be attributed to an effective anti rice smuggling campaign by the new guy in Customs. That’s like admitting smugglers are better in averting shortages than NFA.

That is why Sonny is obligated to choose his words carefully, cross his fingers and pray that things will turn out well despite the obvious signs that something is wrong. But I believe, it is his obligation to tell his boss about his misgivings and he must advocate quick corrective actions even if these must be done quietly.

Having been in his position briefly in a government ministry and more extensively in the private corporate world, I have come to believe that a spokesman must always have the balls to warn his principal of dangers ahead. It may seem easy to just keep a public state of denial over impending problems but that reduces a spokesman’s credibility over time… specially if the feared outcome eventually happens.

Sonny Coloma is putting his personal credibility (and self respect) on the line daily. I only hope his principal realizes this sacrifice enough to listen to his advice so that problems can be navigated with more conscious efforts before things end up as full blown crisis situations.

Two more years, Sonny and you can sleep better and start looking at yourself in the mirror again.

Garlic

A research director of a major local bank whose job requires him to keep track of trade matters wrote me his reaction to last Monday’s column:

Hi Mr. Chanco,

I read your article today about the garlic shortage. I actually was wondering about this because according to the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement we have, garlic is already at zero-tariff and should be importable from any ASEAN country. I am not aware of any non-tariff barriers that would restrict garlic from coming in from ASEAN.

By the way, the free trade of goods within ASEAN has been ongoing since 2010, except for a few restricted items that will retain minimal tariff, like rice and sugar for the Philippines.

So it should be interesting to see what’s causing this shortage; plain and simple hoarding maybe?

Rumor

 There is absolutely no truth to the rumor, the results of recent government biddings notwithstanding, that key cabinet and sub cabinet members are joining the Ayala conglomerate after 2016.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco