Consultants should not become involved in smear campaigns
Experts say whoever sponsors this type of campaign should be unconnected to the debate
Nelson Rodríguez
SANTO DOMINGO. Taking care to establish, right away, the differences that exist between a dirty campaign and a negative campaign, two experts in communication and political consultancy agreed on the following point: "Whoever is going to carry out a dirty campaign, if this is the case, should be sufficiently intelligent in order that when the curtain falls he does not remain in the center of the affair."
Ricardo Perez Casado, the President of the Academy for Professionalism in Politics (APP), says that he feels that it is doubly stupid for whoever sponsors a dirty campaign and, in the end, when it is dismantled, the explanations that he asked to offer place himself in the center as the one who should be investigated or the one who should give explanations.
Along the same lines, Mauricio De Vengoechea, a political strategist and consultant in the handling of governmental crisis situations, reasons that when he suggests that a dirty campaign could have an effect at the beginning, but later it becomes a boomerang.
De Vengoechea, who has also been an advisor for at least 14 presidential candidates in Latin America, and at the present time is the advisor to Leonel Fernandez, is of the opinion that what is happening today with Quirino is something of a red herring, and will end victimizing the former President and favoring him.
And as a proof of what he means, he reveals: "The first thing the polls which we have done in focus groups have given us, is that the people now feel that this is excessive."
Regarding the differentiation that exists between dirty and negative campaigns and that of an attack, De Vengoechea says that the latter, the attacks, sometimes are very effective when there are very close elections, and an attack comes which lowers the other person which in general is a help to your candidate.
"One example of an attack campaign," he recalls, "was what happened in the last election campaign over an error committed by the candidate Hipolito Mejia when he made a statement that accused servants of stealing the filet mignon in order to give it to their boyfriends."
"For us this was an opportunity to carry out an attack campaign because of an error committed by the other candidate himself," he explained.
These campaigns work, he assured his audience, "which seems harmless to me, and what consultants should not do, is play the game of the dirty campaigns, and invent things that are not true."
Perez Casado ended a conversation with the executives of Diario Libre, in which Daniel Ivoskus also took part, with a reflection: The dirty campaigns here among the parties make them lose a lot of energy, a lot of time, and at the end distance a part of the voters from the political process."
Ricardo Perez Casado, the President of the Academy for Professionalism in Politics (APP), says that he feels that it is doubly stupid for whoever sponsors a dirty campaign and, in the end, when it is dismantled, the explanations that he asked to offer place himself in the center as the one who should be investigated or the one who should give explanations.
Along the same lines, Mauricio De Vengoechea, a political strategist and consultant in the handling of governmental crisis situations, reasons that when he suggests that a dirty campaign could have an effect at the beginning, but later it becomes a boomerang.
De Vengoechea, who has also been an advisor for at least 14 presidential candidates in Latin America, and at the present time is the advisor to Leonel Fernandez, is of the opinion that what is happening today with Quirino is something of a red herring, and will end victimizing the former President and favoring him.
And as a proof of what he means, he reveals: "The first thing the polls which we have done in focus groups have given us, is that the people now feel that this is excessive."
Regarding the differentiation that exists between dirty and negative campaigns and that of an attack, De Vengoechea says that the latter, the attacks, sometimes are very effective when there are very close elections, and an attack comes which lowers the other person which in general is a help to your candidate.
"One example of an attack campaign," he recalls, "was what happened in the last election campaign over an error committed by the candidate Hipolito Mejia when he made a statement that accused servants of stealing the filet mignon in order to give it to their boyfriends."
"For us this was an opportunity to carry out an attack campaign because of an error committed by the other candidate himself," he explained.
These campaigns work, he assured his audience, "which seems harmless to me, and what consultants should not do, is play the game of the dirty campaigns, and invent things that are not true."
Perez Casado ended a conversation with the executives of Diario Libre, in which Daniel Ivoskus also took part, with a reflection: The dirty campaigns here among the parties make them lose a lot of energy, a lot of time, and at the end distance a part of the voters from the political process."
Nelson Rodríguez
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