Qwertyman for Monday, July 10, 2023

“IS THIS the best we can do?” That question has been ringing in my mind since a couple of weeks ago when two issues came up that, for me and apparently many others, define the level of mediocrity to which governance and decision-making in this country has sunk. Both concerns have already been well ventilated in social media, which is far more scathing and cruel than a Monday column like mine can afford to be—I hate to start my readers’ week with something likely to leave them with an upset stomach—but let’s just think of this as a gargle to relieve our mouths and throats of unpleasant flavors.

First, ex-Atty. Larry Gadon. I don’t know the guy; I’ve yet to meet him and frankly I hope I never have to. I’ve heard the diatribe for which he was rightfully disbarred by the Supreme Court. It’s an awful slurry of verbal excrement that no one but its own source deserves to experience, and there’s doubtlessly more where it came from, disbarment or not. I can live with that, because I know that there’s an even higher court that will render judgment on this fellow and his kind, and it will come with a harshness commensurate to the totality of one’s character. 

What I find more odious is what came after: the Palace’s affirmation of its trust in its appointee as Presidential Adviser on Poverty Alleviation, and Gadon’s own vague reference to certain corporate managerial skills that supposedly qualified him for the job. I had been chatting with a lawyer the day after the disbarment, wondering what Malacañang would do next. “Oh, that won’t get past Justice Bersamin,” he said, adverting to the Executive Secretary. “Just you wait, they’ll take him down.” The next day Bersamin issued a lame press release echoing Gadon’s argument that he didn’t need to be a lawyer, anyway, to take on the Cabinet-level, Salary Grade 31 post, alleviating at least one person’s shortage of cash. (As Full Professor 12 in UP, after more than 30 years of teaching, I retired at Salary Grade 29. Am I envious? Of course I am—shouldn’t anyone be?)

At this point I was pulling hairs off my balding head. So, okay, he doesn’t need to be a lawyer to lead poverty alleviation. But what else does he bring to the job? Is choosing him the best BBM can do? Or does his selection merely confirm what Palace critics believe to be the lack of any genuine commitment to effective and legitimate governance, to give way to the dispensation of favors to political allies? Just when even skeptics were beginning to give their grudging approval to some appointments that made sense—Jimi FlorCruz as ambassador to China and Gibo Teodoro to Defense being two of them—we slid right back into the muck of patronage politics.

Does BBM think so poorly of the poor that he would entrust their fortunes to a man who, using the Supreme Court’s own words, was booted out of lawyering for his “misogynistic, sexist, abusive, and repeated intemperate language”? How will Presidential Adviser Gadon deal with the hundreds of poor women who will be flocking to his office seeking relief for their plaints? Now that he’s beyond the pale of the Supreme Court, will Gadon feel suitably chastened, or will he be emboldened to spread even more nightsoil around the yard? (The dramatist in me is whispering that true character will assert itself, and bring on its own downfall.)

Issue No. 2, the new “Love the Philippines” tourism slogan and the plagiarism mess that followed with its video. I never liked the word or expression “Meh,” which seems a lazy way to express dissatisfaction, but as 99% of social media seems to agree, “Love the Philippines” was triple-meh, totally uninspiring and unimaginative, and visually cluttered. I’m not even complaining about the P49 million reported to have been paid by the government to the ad agency that conceptualized the slogan; we know that the right few words, properly chosen, could make a world of difference in sales, many times more than the investment. (Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, credited to the American Wieden+Kennedy agency, reportedly boosted Nike’s worldwide sales from $877 million in 1988 to $9.2 billion ten years later. We don’t know how much Nike paid for those three words, but its trademark and stunningly simple “swoosh” was drawn by a female college student who was paid $2 per hour in 1971.)

I also understand that we seem to be too self-critical and terribly hard to please when it comes to tourism slogans, maybe because they’re supposed to encapsulate and project our national identity—on which we have yet to arrive at a consensus, a century and a quarter onward. 

Dick Gordon’s “WOW Philippines” and the subsequent “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” earned their share of brickbats. But whatever those criticisms were, I’d have to agree that either one of them is infinitely better than “Love the Philippines,” whose imperative voice sounds tonally off. (Not to mention its susceptibility to parody, which the Palace’s PR watchdogs should have caught—a “Rob the Philippines” meme has been making the rounds, a tamer verb choice than others I’ve seen.) 

Social media is abuzz with what reportedly happened behind the scenes and what a Palace-favored director supposedly did to screw things up—but again, I’m not even going there, and will limit my dismay to the poor result that often emerges when money, politics, and egos get the better of creatives. The use of video clips from foreign sources to prop up a campaign for Philippine tourism was almost absurdly hilarious and totally inexcusable, and it’s hard to believe that a company as experienced and reputable as the contracted ad agency would have done that knowingly, although it owned up to it. 

At any rate, these missteps don’t do any good for any administration trying to earn the people’s trust, and the ultimate question is, what are they going to do about it? The answer will tell more about those in charge than the minor figures in these scandals.