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| Columns |
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by
Ephraim Munthali, 06 June 2006
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07:59:21
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Grow up OPC
Is the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC), especially its Public Relations Office, so good that it is not only a jack of all trades but also a master of anything and everything?
If that is the case then I don’t see why President Bingu wa Mutharika should maintain his ever-increasing cabinet, the number of inefficient ministries and departments whose names take a lot of air time to read on our national broadcasters.
Statements from the PR Office at OPC leave me with three scenarios: (a) that the occupants of the office don’t have job descriptions and just scavenge for something to do; (b) that the officers know nothing about their jobs in which case they should resign; (c) that the President is an overbearing person and the word delegation does not exist in his dictionary, otherwise why allow his PR people interfere with the operations of whole ministries? I don’t know which is the correct scenario but of one thing I am sure: there is something fundamentally wrong at OPC.
I was dismayed the other day when the overzealous PR office at OPC released a statement, disputing well-researched stories on the acute shortage of foreign currency when every knowledgeable person knew the country had a huge forex deficit.
Even the Reserve Bank of Malawi—a monetary policy authority by law, financial definition and training—and the Ministry of Finance which is an expert on fiscal matters, acknowledged the problem and explained the factors that affected our forex position.
At that time, I could not help but wonder why, how and when the OPC—through its PR Office—assumed the role of monetary authority to allow it to speak so confidently and, not surprisingly, so ignorantly.
Just last week, we had the same PR Office telling us about the Mutharika government’s success over the past two years. The statement boasted of good economic management and improved international relations. It also commented on developments in major sectors of the economy.
Then last Friday, the office released yet another statement, attacking the media and accusing them of being careless and serving personal agenda. I thought it is the Ministry of Information which is the official source of all government communications? Or is the success of government programmes only a result of the President’s effort?
I want to put it to this PR Office that public relations is about establishing and maintaining good will and mutual understanding; that practitioners need to be pro-active not reactive. In short, public relations goes beyond reactionary and baseless press statements.
Public relations is a respected communication function, not a propaganda tool and those who have tried to use it to achieve the latter’s objectives have had their careers end in disgrace.
Ask Allistair Campbell, that flamboyant spin doctor at Number 10 Downing Street in London who tried to sex up Britain’s case for the war in Iraq. He too was in the business of using his position to intimidate the media. He had to resign.
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