Change the speech writers

Is it the speech writer or the speaker? The other day President Estrada accused the media of destabilizing his administration. Among the media's faults: taking his statements out of context and highlighting the bad news. Did he say the nation is in crisis "at present"? But he also said -- or so he claims -- that the nation has recovered from the crisis. That second point wasn't in the speech -- neither in the text nor in what he finally said at the National Prayer Breakfast last Wednesday.

Oh well, if a patient can recover in a day, why not a nation in crisis? If the President of the Republic says the nation has recovered and you can't find the statement in any speech, then at least let the economic fundamentals back him up. Yesterday the government announced that the gross domestic product grew 4.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 1999, for a full-year GDP growth of 3.2 percent.

Investors, however, are looking for more than economic numbers. For starters, they will be more comfortable with a President who says what he means and means what he says, without flip-flopping the next day. Whose idea is it, for example, to blow hot and cold on constitutional amendments? No speech writer can make the President announce a series of 180-degree turns on a crucial policy without the Chief Executive understanding what he's saying.

Still, Sen. Juan Flavier may have a point in putting some of the blame for the mess the President finds himself in on his speech writers. The nation's highest official delivers many speeches -- sometimes several in one day. He has many other pressing matters to attend to and may give the text of a speech only a perfunctory look before delivery. He can thus make a pronouncement whose adverse impact he will realize only much later.

One speech writer who asked not to be named said yesterday the talent pool that prepares the President's speeches is undermanned. But even if Malacañang can't get a battalion of the nation's best and brightest to prepare the President's speeches, there should at least be a Palace official or two who will scrutinize the texts before the Chief Executive trips on his own statements. And if the President doesn't have time to read his speeches, he should change his speech writers.