Listen to some excerpts from the State of the Nation Address (SONA) in 2022:
(1) “Tourism is not only an important economic development tool but the abundance of opportunities that the sector creates in terms of regular employment and even job creation at the grassroots level is undeniable.”
(2) “To boost our tourism industry, we will first and foremost make basic developments such as road improvements for easier access to tourism spots. We will also upgrade our airports and create more international airports to help decongest the bottleneck at the Manila International Airport.”
(3) “They say, each brand has a story. As for the Filipino brand, ours is deeply rooted in our rich cultural heritage and the tourism sector plays an invaluable role in the promotion of the Filipino brand.”
(4) “To foster the Filipino brand is to spark our sense of pride and reaffirm our strong sense of identity. It is time to welcome the rest of the world with an enhanced Filipino brand that is unique, attractive, and creative.”
Me: The Chief Executive had the right to make such bold pronouncements. The onus of communication scholars can be found in passages 3 and 4, while the Secretary of Tourism had the major duty to understand the assignments found in passages 1 and 2 and, of course, she was one of the key leaders who should have arranged for their perfect execution in case she understood her assignments. Now, for the now:
In the course of eight presidencies, we have kept on implementing a few more brands and strategies in communicating them, and, in the process, the strategies do not become part of the equation for problem-solving but part of calculating what the strategies add to the successful accumulation of resources in greedy politics. In rethinking rebranding, there may be attempts to communicate the never-ending development goals. Still, we must remember that we truly need to exert more concrete efforts in accomplishing governmental tasks, chief of which is combating poverty in all its forms.
We did not have significant progress last year – Marcos Jr.’s first year in office – if we carefully listened to the 2023 SONA. Is that the reason why the Vice President is not attending his important address this year? What a significant move in politicking. Is there a reason for her absence and how significant (very petrifying, very Netflix?) was the statement she made about it? Meanwhile, we are mislaying our ability to attract investment and are easily blaming people outside of the government instead of the lack of unified action from within.
Twelve months ago, this column asserted that selling the country to tourists (and foreign investors) is “madaling sabihin, mahirap gawin” (easy to say, hard to do), but many Filipinos are doing it anyway like my friends Kate and Marvin. I wrote that the kind of love of the country they possess, including their related endeavors, does not cost the public treasury. Let us not make that confidential. That is how leading is done when we are not in the positions of leadership. Tayo ang Palawan at Boracay. We all are.
DC Alviar
Professor DC Alviar serves as a member of the steering committee of the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO). He was part of National University’s community extension project that imparted the five disciplines of a learning organization (Senge, 1990) to communities in a local government unit. He writes and edits local reports for Mega Scene. He graduated with a master’s degree in development communication from the University of the Philippines Open University in Los Baños. He recently defended a dissertation proposal for his doctorate degree in communication at the same graduate school under a Philippine government scholarship grant. He was editor-in-chief of his high school paper Ang Ugat and the Adamson News.
