EDITORIAL – Too many cooks spoil the broth

Malacanang says it is against any snap elections. What it did not say is whether it is against unscheduled polls forever or only at this time when the present occupant of the palace is in a situation where she is damned if she did and damned if she didn't.

There is no clearcut policy emanating from the (hot) seat of government on anything. The hold of President Arroyo on power is so precarious prevents her from embarking on any long-term policy decisions.

This is of course understandable. With the future looking so bleak, any decision Arroyo makes will always be in danger of getting overtaken by events. Our only wish is that she should not rely too much on her lapdogs to make announcements.

Perhaps she has not realized it. Perhaps she is too scared of having to eat her words afterward. But the practice of relying too much on spokesmen to communicate with the nation is perhaps the most clumsy way of holding on to power.

Thrust into a position of seeming importance, which is not really commensurate to their significance, presidential or palace spokesmen often fall into the trap of giving the nation a piece of their own minds, not the president's.

Most spokesmen have little built-in defense mechanism against that affliction called self-importance. Often, they embellish presidential positions to the point they become unrecognizable to the president herself.

Worse, and as is often the case, when things backfire, the president is left with little option but to go along with a certain notion expounded by a spokesman even if the president actually meant a notion that was entirely different.

This happens when the spin doctors determine it more costly to take back that which has been parted than to stick to the bone in the throat in the hope the pain just goes away, which is in fact what usually happens.

To be sure, the unpopularity of President Arroyo grows by the day. But nobody is really ever admitting that a large portion of the blame lies with the spokesmen who tend to confuse their own personalities with their principal. Nothing good ever comes out of such a mix-up.