Monday, August 30, 2010

AUGUST 28 Morning Session on Public Diplomacy: Seminar on Philippine Advancement through Security and Promotion of Information

The expansion of democracy in the modern times has shaped a new environment in the international system where in government can win hearts and minds of the people. Primarily this is how public diplomacy moves by striving to influence foreign nationals and the community with values, policies and actions of their very own government to be supported. In this light, public diplomacy can be identified as the attempt of a nation to influence public or elites of the next leaders or other nations for the intention of using foreign policy for its objective. The government tries to communicate their ideas, culture, goals and current policies with the public both foreign and local. Basically public diplomacy has 2 kinds of aims: short and long term. Short term is used for current policies that can be viewed as a concept for a state to improve its image overseas, which will be flattering or favorable to the state. Long term aims on the other hand is for endorsing its culture. One strength of public diplomacy is that it makes use of soft power instead of hard power and has brought reliance of citizens on their local press and governments for information on foreign events, which amplified possible targets for diplomatic messages. Lastly it also delivers both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy in a manner that it is proposed for national interest in pursuit of promotion of trade, investment and international tourism where there is collaboration between both the domestic and international policy arenas likewise with the public and private sphere.

The class was required to be present during the morning session of the SEM-CDA class s last august 28 which was about public diplomacy. Domingo Enerio, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Tourism did a phenomenal job as our speaker since he was very articulate and he had to fill in for the other speakers who were absent that day. He repeatedly told us that our country is beautiful, actually every country has a beauty of its own and as citizens of the country, we are the number 1 ambassador of the country. He also stressed the importance of us Filipinos supporting and promoting our country to other countries to develop nationalism, a profound love for one’s country and also help our country to rise and encourage foreign businesses and tourists to invest in our country which is also a considerably large part of our economy. During the question and answer portion he was asked mostly about the hostage that transpired last August 23. Although he repeatedly said that DOT is a very aggressive department, in times of such tragedies aggressiveness is lessen since over-promoting the country may be seen overly disrespectful for other countries affected by it. On the lighter side that event shouldn’t be an obstacle for our country to continue to rise, since incidents as such will be learning lessons to prevent such incidents from happening again.

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