Reinvention

The President, according to his press office, carved out time to work on next Monday’s State of the Nation Address (SONA). That will be hard work.

The SONA is always the record of a leader’s achievements as well as vision, the speech of reference.

I had the privilege of working on the SONA teams of former presidents Fidel Ramos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. My involvement began with Ramos’ second SONA and was some sort of punishment for criticizing, in his face, his maiden SONA as resembling a cut-and-paste military-style memo.

Both Ramos and Arroyo were legendary taskmasters. For both, the SONA team began working on the speech in April. Despite the early start, we were always cramming.

Much of the work involves condensing all the inputs from the various government departments and select only those that adhere to the central theme. Otherwise the SONA would last many hours.

While the speech is a condensation of many things, the prose must be allowed to breathe. The speech must be breathtaking but not breathless. Enough applause lines must be built in so that the speech not only clarifies but also uplifts. Nearly every other sentence must be a high point. The soundbites must never appear contrived.

The SONA remains a draft until it is delivered. Presidents continue to work and rework the speech even as they are transported to the House of Representatives for the big event. The few copies printed out before the actual address are carefully marked “Check against Delivery.”

Quite often, presidents make impromptu statements as they deliver the momentous address. That is every speechwriter’s nightmare.

Of all our recent presidents, Rodrigo Duterte was most notorious for meandering away from the script. There was one instance where he strayed so far from the prepared text, his SONA extended to nearly double the time it normally takes.

I was in Davao City in the last week of June 2016 for the “Sulong Pilipinas,” a broad-based gathering of groups supporting Duterte’s reform agenda. Less than an hour before the president-elect was due to speak, I was asked to draft a speech for the occasion. I never worked to furiously on any piece of text in my life.

In the end, Duterte