Hate Love? Powers-that-be are used to it.
Retro feels and online hate for the new national tourism slogan
Recently a contemporary of the President who’d also studied in the UK around the time he did (but didn’t run in the same circles) suggested to me that the President’s zest for travel had an additional dimension to the one I assumed (that he was exposed to diplomatic travel, indeed trained in it, and adores it, from an early age, by his mother). That dimension was that it was another aspect of why he sought the presidency in the first place: to redeem and vindicate the family name. Restoration at home is nothing if not accompanied by restoration abroad, and that includes being back in the select circle of world leaders instead of forced out of it. Not to mention, of course, the political and diplomatic coup that was securing the support of Washington, the traditional Filipino security blanket.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock chances are you will have encountered, by now, in one form or another, criticisms of the slogan itself, or some sort of account of how “non original shots” were used in the video launching the slogan. It was a boo-boo that launched a thousand memes, my favorite being a picture of the pyramids of Giza with the logo, “LOVE the Philippines.”
I think the ad agency fell on its sword after the social media reactions to the video forced the Department of Tourism to backpedal and ditch the video. My civil society colleague Vicente Romano III, who himself fell on his sword due to an ill-fated national tourism slogan campaign, believes the slogan will have to be dropped and a new campaign will have to be launched. The Secretary of Tourism’s regional allies insist, however, that she, personally, and not the slogan, or even the ad agency, is the target of a smear campaign. “Malaysia, Truly Asia” dates to 1999, though for every Filipino who points to it as an enduring success, there seems to be a Malaysian who thinks it’s past its expiration date.
Linda Richter’s article, linked to below, is full of nuggets; one I wasn’t able to use, succinctly explains, “Legitimacy, international influence, foreign economic investment, patronage, and personal fortunes represent high political stakes which the administration has garnered through an adroit use of government credit, imagination, and Filipino hospitality.”
This week’s The Long View:
THE LONG VIEW
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:12 AM July 05, 2023
Last week the President received, from his secretary of tourism, an award from the Department of Tourism (DOT) to his late father, for the outstanding achievement of having established the department half a century ago. In the same anniversary event, the President announced the country’s new tagline, “Love Philippines.” Back in May, when the administration approved the national tourism development plan to the end of the president’s term in 2028, Secretary of Tourism Christina Frasco had already said to expect an “enhanced tourism slogan.”
Which takes us to the retro nature of our tourism. Our very first tourism slogan was “Where Asia Wears A Smile,” and therein lies a tale best told by Linda Richter in her paper, “ The Political Uses of Tourism: A Philippine Case Study “ which analyzed the ways and means by which tourism was used by the first Marcos administration, a story in which the creation of the Department, later Ministry, of Tourism is indivisible from that of the New Society, the branding for the “constitutional authoritarianism” that blurred the end of the Third Republic and the eight years of improvisation that preceded the proclamation of the New (or Fourth) Republic in 1981.
Without formally abolishing either the constitution or Congress, Marcos Sr. assumed lawmaking powers by issuing Presidential Decree №1 which reorganized the entire executive department, instituting a Department of Commerce and Tourism, only to separate tourism and make it a separate entity through two 1973 decrees, PD 132 and 189. While she didn’t notice it, an observation by Richter is actually demonstrated by a provision of Marcosian law: A shrewd observation, “It is sometimes said that in the Philippines there is no such thing as ‘conflict of interest,’ merely “‘convergence of interest.’” When in one of his decrees Marcos specifically exempted the tourism council from government rules on conflict of interest!
To Richter, a DO was necessary because of two presidential concerns and not necessarily because of generating additional revenue for the country: “First, he had to overcome the shock and dismay in some Western circles at the imposition of martial law in what was widely believed to be the most democratic country in Southeast Asia in order to neutralize opposition to his leadership. Second, he had to assure that martial law would neither jeopardize the flow of foreign capital investment into the country nor encourage cuts in foreign aid or new trade barriers to Philippine exports.”
The examples she provides are illuminating. There were the annual blockbusters: Miss Universe in 1974; the Muhammed Ali-Joe Frazier “Thrilla in Manila” in 1975; the International Monetary Fund-World Bank Conference in 1976. Not everything succeeded, though 1977’s Eighth World Peace through Law Conference, with its theme of the international protection of human rights, was the “only politically motivated project which clearly boomeranged”, though not for lack of trying: The president lifted the curfew, ended the ban on international travel (a wily accompanying move was to impose a travel tax so high, it was “prohibitive for all but the most affluent”), and released 1,500 prisoners.
At the time she published her paper in 1980, when the tourism efforts of the Marcoses had already lasted seven years, Richter could already conclude “It reflects a serious political program implemented with surprising disregard for the economic costs of such an endeavor.”
If “Virginia is for Lovers,” which dates to 1969 is still going strong; and so is, “I?NY” which dates to 1977, why not Love, actually?
Originally published at https://mlq3.substack.com.
