Successfully Lewd

Many are asking: will Uson be booted out from her government post because of the lewd federalism video controversy attributed to her creative juice?

No way.

Amorous Tatay Digong is so enamoured with Mocha because she is one of the rare mammals who can read his mind. In other word, they are in the same operating frequency. Both think and act Machiavellian. They do not care about the negative reactions to what they say and do as long as they get what they want. DU30 became so popular and landed as tenant of the palace along murky and stinking Pasig  precisely by making unprecedented controversies, cursing the pope, claiming  he had killed and will still kill, regretting about not being in the queue over the ganged-rape Ausie missionary, offering  the improvable but titillating promise, which captured millions voters,  to end  the drug menace, corruption and criminality in 6 months’ time, and now has remained popular and continued to have a  tight grip of power by  creating enemies with church authorities and calling God stupid.

And Uson, meanwhile was trolling, diverting or fogging issues, maligning everyone perceived against her patron and  has become so successful and popular and for that was made the queen of the social media of the Presidential Communications Operations Office of the Palace.

So how could the President kick out such a wonderful asset? Forget the upset party-mates in Congress. Blabber as they may they will still remain nearby to lick his butt; they had nowhere to go.

Anyway, minus the ethical and morality issue, from communications campaign standpoint, Mocha was right. One of the objectives of the operational campaign on federalism was to create or raise awareness on the subject.  The video has achieved that, and, in her words, “it is now the task of the experts to provide the substance.”

Theoretically, the target of a communication campaign passes through the process or stages of awareness, interest, knowledge, decision-making, and action. The boundaries are of course imaginary but for the purpose of planning, they are presumed to exist to determine the strategies in maximizing the end results. Each stage requires different message types and media of communication.

In awareness, the communicator works to make his product familiar and recognizable by the target audience.  Naturally, the message is one that can attract and immediately capture the attention of the audience and the media to use are those that can reach the widest target. In the past, the radio dominated, still does apparently, in awareness campaign because radio receiving sets are available even in the remotest of barangays. And catchy 30-seconder radio jingles are easy and cheap to produce. Remember the jingle” sa ikakaunlad ng bayan disiplina ang kailangan” to sell and embed in the consciousness of the people the Marcos Martial Law?

Mocha is not in the mass media. She has a different platform and is concerned and focused on  her accordingly 5 million or so followers in the social media. She did what she had to do and succeeded: her lewd video became viral in just a few minutes from posting. Federalism is now made familiar to everyone , not just in her turf but outside. There was, in fact, an overflow that reached unnecessarily even to  the territorial Senate, creating a ruckus that further enhances far and wide the awareness drive on the subject. What is now needed is for the intended population to really know and understand federalism, sustain their interest, and eventually internalize and accept it. This may require new platforms,   more cerebral workers, and different strategies and messages.

Will the experts succeed in selling finally federalism to the Filipino people at the same level with Mocha’s success in raising awareness about it?

Whatever,  PCOO Asec. Mocha Uson has already done her part. She may now have her vacation, basking in glory on her accomplishment.

The Finite Sea

We often come across the old saying that you “give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Not anymore.

This adage in its literal sense was applicable to Confucius’ time when the sea was so huge and was an inexhaustible source of fish. Thus even, if more fishers were added to the existing hands, there would still be fish for everybody.

In the Philippines, the  government in the Department of Agriculture Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources  still believes in the adage and behaves accordingly. That is why it has been distributing   fishing boats and nets to fishers new and old under their anti-poverty and food security program, notwithstanding research reports on the deplorable conditions and the plummeting catch in the country’s fishing grounds.

Truth to tell, the capacity of the sea to replenish whatever resource extracted from it has been compromised by a lot of things –  by the rapid change in information and extraction  technologies  that has shrunk its size resulting to over-exploitation and destruction; by pollution, and by climate change.

 There is, for instance, no international law enforceable in the community of nations that regulate the extraction of fishery resources. Thus commercial fishing vessels of wealthy nations employ fishing nets of several kilometres long to maximize catch haul all over the globe. Unfortunately, during extremely foul weather, these nets are severed from the fishing vessels to save the vessels and the crew. Here was born the phenomenon of ghost fishing, where several nets of hundreds of kilometers long are drifting in the oceans catching and killing whales,  sharks, turtles, cow fish and other big sea organisms their harvest of which does not benefit anyone.

At the archipelagic level, destructive fishing undermines the natural capacity of the fishery resources to replenish extraction. The situation is made worst by the spiraling number of poor who join the fisher population in order to survive.

The sea is the last refuge of the very poor. Without a farm to till and employable skills, the sea, which does not require any qualifications, accommodates anyone interested to engage in fishing as a livelihood, unreliable it may be as a source of income to feed a family. To increase declining harvest, fishers employ destructive fishing methods like blasting, the use of fine-mesh nets and poison which at the end only diminish further their catch.

Moreover, pollution from various sources is smothering fish nurseries and other habitats that further worsen the productivity of the marine waters.

The advent of climate change has increased the temperature in tropic waters forcing fish to migrate to  cooler regimes up north of the equator, impoverishing, thus the areas left behind.

Hence, what is imperative today is not simply to teach a man how to fish but also  to teach him and everybody in this planet to protect and save the sea.

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