Looking back at the noise and the narratives of the past few years, I’m resharing this seven-part series written by veteran journalist Edwin Espejo. In this series, Edwin meticulously details the period when the political opposition attempted to decapitate those of us behind President Duterte’s successful and innovative campaign—labeling us “trolls” in an effort to discredit the genuine movement that brought him to Malacañang. It’s a perspective worth revisiting, especially when looking at the disconnect that continues to play out in our political landscape today. First published on Facebook, here is the first part of that series.
Nic Gabunada
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Decapitating the ‘trolls’ of Duterte: A 7-Part Retrospective
First of a series
By Edwin Espejo
(June 28, 2021)
A known communication specialist during the 2016 presidential campaign identified with the then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte campaign camp was recently in the headlines after he reportedly bagged a contract with the Department of Finance to help in developing the agency’s “brand and communications strategies.”
Nicanor Gabunada, a resident of a sleepy town of Padada in Davao del Sur, is a retired top marketing man of ABS-CBN who surfaced and appeared in online and television interviews several weeks after Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was proclaimed winner of the 2016 presidential elections.
Gabunada was a former student activist but graduated magna cum laude in management engineering at the Ateneo de Davao University.
Low-key and unassuming, Gabunada was not engaged in public relations prior to his involvement in the 2016 presidential elections.
In fact, no one in the communications group of Duterte was engaged in the profession that is public relations.
Rappler’s core of editors, including Maria Ressa, was a contemporary of Gabunada at ABS-CBN, albeit in different departments. He in the marketing arm and Ressa as head of its news and public affairs department.
Gabunada retired from ABS-CBN in 2005 while Maria Ressa and her associates went on to establish www.rappler.com, an online news outlet now more known as Rappler, in 2008.
He went into freelance consulting practice and joined Omnicom Media Group, a media ad placement agency, but resigned in 2015 to join Duterte’s team.
Unlike the high-profile communication and PR teams of the 2016 major presidential candidates, Duterte’s media group was composed of media volunteers and journalists from Davao City and nearby provinces. Its video production teams were a ragtag band of amateur events videographers and photographers with no previous media production outputs of national import.
(to be continued)
