Gilberto Teodoro

Speaking of Kamaganak, Inc. I stopped over at DND Secretary Gilberto Teodoro's site to check it out again. Last time I visited, it had two separate areas dealing with his plans for the country: a detailed strategy for each region of the country and a list of issues he deems important. (urls were http://gibo.ph/strategy.aspx and http://gibo.ph/issue.aspx)


Well, those are now GONE! Go ahead and check the 404.


Sec. Teodoro has a brand spanking new platform which is the Lakas Kampi CMD party platform.


And so we have a winner for the Most Improved in Platform Authoring!


Unlike the previous incarnations which were too disjointed, this one actually makes more sense and appears more consistent. Here's one example from the previous format: He identifies innovation as a key economic issue yet none of his strategies addresses this. Instead there are a lot of infrastructure development ideas without an overarching rationale. It's a grocery list. Where's the innovation in that? To further confuse the message, the site had Sec. Teodoro declaring the age of copying previous trends passe. My impression was that the strategies and issues were written by a band of consultants who did not consult the candidate or each other.

The newer platform is a quantum improvement. For the issue of infrastructure it notes the need for the integration and convergence of all transport modalities. It calls for the expansion of inter-island transportation and communication. The infrastructure agenda coincides with and supports the thrust for rural and agricultural development (which are separate platform items). Things work together.

If the party hired a multitude of consultants to write this script, I'm glad they're now talking to each other and to their candidate! So team Gibo gets an A for effort instead of cousin Noynoy.

Too bad there's still that stigma associated with the old regime. In previous statements he openly admitted favoritism for Gloria Arroyo and even professed a debt of gratitude to her for giving him his break in government. In a TV interview he expressed his hesitance in pursuing graft charges because of these reasons. Disturbing statements indeed. Who else will he let off the hook because of a debt of gratitude? What if these people were guilty of severe crimes?

Those troubling statements have also disappeared from his website. I think it's part of the move to sanitize his image. If I monitor elections again, I will be shamelessly copying the interesting statements from political sites. That way I can keep a better record of a campaign's development.

I doubt the recent move to create distance from PGMA will do much good in the middle of the game. Something more dramatic needs to happen before people completely dissociate the Secretary from the passing administration.

Gibo Teodoro redeems himself on Platform but his past life leaves a big question mark on character. Admittedly, he's well trained and capable. The question is: capable of what?