WHEN all that you have to rely on is integrity, then you need a very tightly held team for that.
Admit it, the Presidential Communications team seems to be all over the place, with slips and gaffs that manifests a lack of coherence and cohesion.
For the first-timers, like many of them, it must have been a harrowing two months, but hey, it’s a job they have individually taken on, they just have to bite the bullet and then march on.
But, only as one. In a job as difficult as keeping up with President Rodrigo Duterte, the more than 20 years he has successfully led the city was because his people were all standing behind him.
Not one was trying to put one over any one, like what apparently happened at the Official Gazette that sent the social media world abuzz, angry, jeering on one side, defensive, leering on the other.
It’s something you wouldn’t want to happen right on top of the booboo over the seating arrangement that social media grabbed and ran away with even before it could be verified.
There was so much chest-beating there that Duterte will be seated in between United States President Barack Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
Too much, such that a normal thinking person would already be doubting the veracity of.
How would such seating arrangement come to be in an international summit attended by government leaders? But no one even tried to be circumspect and check our the rumor first. What followed?
It’s funny. While everyone knows that the social media played a key role in the victory of President Rodrigo Duterte, those tasked to communicate what he is about seem not to realize that while that given their official nature, they should handle social media with extreme care and caution.
There is very little room for mistakes in social media, when you are representing whatever it is you are sharing in an official capacity.
If ever there is, then owning up to the mistake and apologizing should come fast and sincere.
Not a single hour should be allowed to pass after the realization of a mistake.
There is no room for braggadocio in social media when you are representing an office and not yourself because while you may believe you are good at whatever you do, whoever believes like you can never outnumber those who do not even know anything about you, and worse, do not care to know.
Having seen how things can explode right in their faces, this should not be the time for comeuppance by those waiting on the sidelines, instead, this should be the time when the communications group act as a team and follow just one leader. Otherwise, the proverbial snakes in the snake pit will pour out into the social media.
Now that is a more difficult situation to find oneself in.
In short, it’s time to crack the whip and march as one, because as has been said: “When sh-t hits the fan, there’s gonna be sh-t on every one.”
No one will be spared. There is no room for any comeuppance here, there is no room for pagmamagaling. There is but the work to be done and done well.