With a supporter like RJ Nieto, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte won’t need enemies.
In his over DESPERATION to win some credibility as a journalist and project himself as being someone who has highly placed sources in Malacanang, he is wittingly or unwittingly giving the impression that President Duterte’s cabinet is in disarray.
This goes against any claim Nieto has of being fully supportive of President Duterte as it misinforms the administration’s supporters about the performance of his cabinet members and serves the interests of his detractors because it projects weakness where there isn’t.
This morning one of the people in my Facebook friends list shared Nieto’s live video recording where he repeated his assertion that the filing of information against President Duterte at the ICC could have been prevented if only the DFA and PCOO coordinated with one another to counter the negative publicity campaign in Europe.
In saying this, Nieto betrayed his lack of understanding of the roots and causes of the ICC preliminary examination. Which runs contrary to his claim of liking and closely watching the performance of Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque, who gave a very detailed and very public lecture on the ICC’s process as well as the complaint which initiated the ICC’s preliminary examination.
Nieto also dismisses the weight of the numerous, widely distributed official statements issued by DFA Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano regarding the ICC complaint and the basis of those complaints.
Finally, he also ignores the work done by the PCOO to broadly disseminate information regarding the ICC complaint and the issues surrounding it.
Nieto is grossly MISTAKEN in saying that the PCOO and DFA did not coordinate with one another to counter false perceptions surrounding the ICC complaint. The PCOO communicates with all departments on a daily basis on a large number of issues including that of the ICC.
Nieto is using the ICC complaint to NAG President Duterte into firing Secretary Martin Andanar and by the looks of it, has only portrayed President Duterte as weak in the eyes of the international community.
Let us remember that part of the ICC complaint stems from the number of reported deaths during police operations against illegal drugs syndicates.
Hearings in the senate and articles analyzing the reported number of deaths are said to point out numerous gaps in the way the Philippine National Police implemented its campaign.
To address the negative perception of the President’s war on drugs, the PCOO launched #RealNumbersPH which is a multi platform communications campaign contributed immensely to Duterte’s approval ratings.
The campaign rectified false data on deaths in legitimate police operations that were being spread by Amnesty International (which put the deaths at 30 Million!), Human Rights Watch (which placed the deaths at 30,000), and other organizations funded by foreign interests.
But of course, Nieto will predictably ask, “How come people in Europe have a negative perception of President Duterte and PH inspite of RealNumbersPH?”
The question Nieto asks betrays his ignorance of geo-politics because he fails to account for US and European interests that were threatened by the President’s shift to an independent foreign policy.
Even granting that Nieto’s claim that the PCOO has a budget of P1.3 Billion is correct (which it is NOT), it is impossible for the Philippine government to even match the lobby fund of organizations and individuals with billions of dollars at their disposal.
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