SOME holders of Malacañang’s official press identification card found something to amuse themselves with while waiting for the President to arrive at an event last week.
This is again to the embarrassment of the Presidential Communications Operations Office, which issued an ID card full of grammatical errors to journalists covering Malacañang. The entire text was in capital letters, which in today’s fashion amounts to screaming.
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“This card to be worn during presidential coverage, but subject to specific accreditation/ security requirements. It should be worn all times in entering Malacanang and while inside the palace grounds. Unauthorized use of this card will result in confiscation.
It is non-transferable and void if altered this card remains property of Presidential Communications Office.
Upon expiration or when resigns from his or her agency this card should be returning without delay to the International Press Center, G/F National Press Club. Magallanes Drive Intramuros Manila.”
The language is so atrocious one would think there was a deliberate attempt by someone within the staff to make the PCOO look more stupid and ridiculous than it is already perceived.
This is the same executive office whose assistant secretary used misleading pictures to portray the siege in Marawi and who believed Mayon Volcano was in another location altogether. The same agency whose news platform contained unverified information on countries purportedly supporting the administration’s war on drugs, and which believed that the Labor and Employment Department’s logo was that of a pineapple-producing company.
There is only one thing worse than a sabotage—that the mistake was genuine, and that the PCOO bosses had allowed it to pass, anyway.
Communications Secretary Martin Andanar, whose signature is shown on the ill-fated card, says he never saw a draft of the text and that the wrong electronic signature was used on his behalf. He has ordered an investigation into how the blunder was committed.
The reaction only sounds comical, given that these are things one should be taking for granted already.
Sure, this is a small thing, it’s just text on the back of an ID card, anyway, and there are decidedly more consequential issues that this office should be preoccupied with.
But it is also a big thing because it says a lot about the quality of work that people around the President are turning in. It’s sloppy staff work, period.
Even the fact that the right processes were not observed in the approval and release of the ID tells us about the poor work flow in Andanar’s office. He really should not be complaining and ordering a probe; he should be covering his face in shame that such hilarious mistakes happen under his watch.
Excellence is a way of life. Before one can excel in grand things, one must at least be able to get the little things right.