TWO officials are on the
frontlines in the government's day-to-day struggle carrying the GMA flag - Press Secretary
Ignacio Bunye and Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin.
I have long intended to write a column about Bunye because he is the most effective
presidential spokesman in living memory.
Unlike the Estrada spokesmen who were too slick, too glib, too glossy, and sometimes
committed mistakes because of their high intensity, Bunye is low-voltage and disarms you
without your being aware of it.
Tough questions have been hurled at him in the last few months, but I do not recall any
instance where he ended up on the losing end.
It seems that he is nice not because he is deliberately trying to be nice, as press
secretaries always do when with journalists, but because it is his nature, and he simply
builds on it.
He has not performed amateurishly in his replies during encounters with journalists - and
a press conference is always an event which, in the words of Douglas MacArthur, "is
like Vietnam, fraught with dangers and saturated with hazards."
He has not ignited a bomb even if he often treads a field full of land-mines.
And he is, fortunately, not without timely or appropriate - not to say safe - wit and
humor.
Of course, all spokesmen at one time or another have to prevaricate, dissimulate, waffle,
and equivocate.
For this, some of them end up disrespected or demeaned in the overall impression that
journalists develop about them.
But Bunye, in his overall image or performance, has not incurred the ire or disappointment
of journalists who are, by nature and profession, adversarial and have the tendency to
regard government spokesmen with disdain.
Like a circus trainer, he knows exactly how much meat to give to the lions or to the dogs,
as the case may be, knowing how to begin and where to end without provoking their growls
or barks.
Bunye has neither hype nor histrionics, while on the other end, he does not look as if he
is incompetently groping for words or thoughts and thus ignite negative impressions.
He looks confident, at ease and trustworthy. His is one appointment where GMA has reason
to be proud and satisfied.
I believe that Bunye is much better than another public official in another office in the
past, Executive Secretary Oscar Orbos, who was also low-voltage but often danced around
questions too long and too self-indulgently and sometimes had the tendency to
circumlocute.
Budget Secretary Boncodin, like Bunye, looks trustworthy and credible, at least to
television viewers.
To her belongs the formidable task of explaining the financial habiliments of the
government in these most incoherent most precipitous, most tintinnabulating and most
vestibulous times.
As in the case of Bunye, I do not remember hearing or reading bad words about her, except
for some brooding remarks by one or two congressmen who, as it is usual with congressmen,
could not make heads or tails of the complicated financial pirouettes and reverbe-rations
she was making at a hearing.
In the early days of GMA's term, Boncodin was not heard much, but today she has been
summoned by contemporary imperatives and peniten-tial events to step forward and speak up.
She does it gently and slowly but steadily and firmly, and it is to his professional
advantage that she is always called upon to talk about
the budget - a subject which she is naturally the most knowledgeable about, being the
budget secretary, what else.
In other words, she is always in favorable terrain, and she knows how to exploit it.
She can always throw the book at you - and it's usually a book you have not read.
So, how do you match wits with her?
Saturday, September 25, 2004
6:58:39 PM |