Duterte’s own staff seem to be undermining his administration

I’ve long suspected that there are Liberal Party moles in high places in Duterte’s communications group and in the DFA.

Is Martin Andanar a mole? For now, I don’t think so, but it’s pretty clear he’s more concerned about protecting his professional future than protecting the president, or the international image of the Philippines.

Andanar is junketing all over the world going on “trainings” and signing MOUs with foreign media companies, but he neglects the most basic and essential things, such as keeping an eye on Duterte’s Wikipedia page.

Check it out. It’s obvious the yellows have a team regularly editing that Wikipedia page, which basically paints Duterte as a mass murderer and fentanyl addict, and even makes Davao sound like the rape and crime capital of the Philippines. The page contains none of Duterte’s accomplishments to balance out the negative stuff.

Wikipedia gets a lot of eyeballs from foreigners and it’s the one thing that Duterte’s comms team can actually have some control over. It doesn’t take a lot to monitor it. But Andanar would rather spend resources printing a stupid local tabloid that has only a few thousand copies and doesn’t make any difference. Andanar just doesn’t know how to prioritize. He’s working on a lot of long-term stuff, at the expense of the immediate, more urgent matters that he should be attending to.

Andanar just wants to keep preaching to the choir. He doesn’t want to antagonize his former colleagues in local news media, so he lets poor old inexperienced Ernie Abella deal with them. When Duterte sent him to the US for Trump’s inauguration, I thought he would at least spend some time meeting with Trump’s comms team and learning how they counter CNN, NY Times, and the other media there. But no, Andanar stayed in his comfort zone and just met with the OFWs, who are already pro-Duterte.

What about PTV 4? PTV 4 is just repeating the same stuff coming out of GMA7, CNN Philippines, and the other networks. PTV 4 is crawling with yellows for sure. They used to religiously air and live-tweet Leni Robredo’s event appearances and speeches as if she was the President. They toned that down after Duterte fired her from his Cabinet, but you can still tell they’re protecting Robredo by not reporting her bloopers. Even their coverage of the Palit Bise press conference was so toned down. They just cherry-picked the soundbites of the organizers to make it sound like they didn’t really want Robredo ousted or impeached but only wanted her to change.

Maybe Duterte gave instructions to Andanar not to use government resources to defend him. But Andanar needs to make Duterte understand that defending him = defending the Philippines. Duterte represents the Philippines. The more damaged his reputation gets, the harder it is to market the Philippines. I deal with a lot of foreign businessmen and I’m fucking tired of having to spend more than half of meetings just trying to explain that what they read about Duterte and state-sanctioned killings in the Philippines isn’t true.

The DFA is the other group that seems to be intentionally letting the image of the Philippines go to the dogs. That place is still crawling with former DFA sec Albert del Rosario’s minions. Yellow officials like Leni Robredo and Risa Hontiveros are holding anti-Filipino and anti-Duterte events abroad in direct collaboration with embassy officials. If you guys saw that video of the OFW in Australia arguing with Risa Hontiveros, you’ll note that the embassy official presiding over the event actually tried to shut the OFW up. This webpage of the Philippine embassy in Italy also shows Robredo’s picture on its homepage along with Duterte’s. Since when has a VP ever been on the same stature as the President?

Then there’s Agnes Callamard. Up to now, no one from the DFA has called out this woman for misrepresenting herself as a spokesperson of the UN. Pinoys have been protesting outside the UN HQ in New York, not knowing that Callamard is not even an employee of the UN. She actually admitted that she doesn’t represent the UN in that video where an OFW debated with her in a forum in Switzerland. But still, the DFA is silent. The DFA is just letting Pinoys continue believing that Callamard’s statements reflect the official position of the UN.

Duterte won’t know all of this is happening unless the people close to him who are really loyal to him let him know. Bong Go needs to make sure the President gets the true picture at all times, because there are so many people around him who can’t be trusted.

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