With a call to political leaders to adapt their speeches to the new realities of politics and communication, the Academy for Professionalism in Politics (APP) opened the second cycle of the course “Election Campaigns in the 21st Century: from improvisation to science,” yesterday, Wednesday 18 February 2015.
In his opening words, APP president Ricardo Perez Fernandez stressed the importance of good discourse and knowledge of the issues and feelings that interest the voters at this time. Later, Yago de Marta, a consultant in personal persuasive communication and speech trainer, gave a talk on “Oratory, rhetoric and personal communication,” at the El Embajador Hotel in Santo Domingo. In the afternoon, a panel discussion was held on political discourse and the Dominican communications media. Diario Libre director Adriano Miguel Tejada, former Dominican ambassador in Washington Flavio Dario Espinal, rector of the Global Institute of Higher Studies in the Social Sciences Marcos Villaman, and PRD spokesman Victor Gomez Casanova were on the panel.
Tejada recalled that in 1962 a new, more down-to-earth stage in political discourse began with former President Juan Bosch, since the political discourse during the Trujillo era was very flowery with elaborate phrases where people did not understand what was being said but someone in the audience always applauded.
He pointed out that the current parameters of society are open government, transparency and sensibility, so that current politicians should not forget about those elements, since “When the press is quiet the walls talk.”
Tejada stressed that there are 10 newspapers in the country with a daily print run of 450,000 and there are 379 radio stations, and the fact that there are 90 cable systems at the local level should not be ignored because of their strong local influence. He stated that the big dilemma for a politician is to know how to interpret the anxieties of the people, so as to interpret the deepest feelings of the voters. A politician cannot be ignorant of the demographics, and has to analyze all the parties’ government programs and use his or hers as the discourse.
Flavio Dario Espinal said that when it comes to political discourse the challenge is to construct feelings and provide answers to the needs of the people. He said that the challenge for a candidate or political leader is not only talking to the people, but also constructing the feeling of giving answers to the aspirations of the voting masses. “They have to understand the reality of the people.”
Marcos Villaman pointed out that there are leaders with a discourse in which they show that they do not understand what is happening in the country because they do not understand what is happening in the world. Villaman said that politics is a struggle, a fight to guide society towards a determined point where they can show the problems that are current and propose alternative solutions.