TOUGH TO ASSAIL. Critics may have found it difficult to denounce the trips of Cebu Governor Pam Baricuatro. Yet, expectedly, that didn’t stop criticisms from flying.
[] Baricuatro has gone on a personal trip to Japan from April 4 to 8, 2026. No public fund involved. No expense to question about, unless it can be shown that a private person with business at the Capitol picked up the tab.
[] An FTA (foreign travel authority) issued to Guv Pam shows she met all requirements for the trip. Approval by the local government secretary means any defect or irregularity (e.g. any filing delay, any lacking paper) didn’t exist or has been corrected or cured.
[] A leave of absence, as it was a personal trip, was presumably issued, the document being essential to the release of an FTA.
[] Vice Governor Glenn Soco was informed by DILG in a letter-notice signed by DILG Provincial Director Jesus Trouel Sasitrillo Jr. about the governor’s trip and leave. The acting governor was also given a copy of the designation of Provincial Board Member Lorenz Lagon as acting vice governor. (Delay in the notice, two days — on April 6, 2026 at 12:41 p.m. — after the leave started, was apparently caused by the Lent long vacation.)
WHAT CRITICS HURL. The flak still came, not surprisingly. And it leaned heavily on the governor’s alleged failure to notify her constituents:
Guv Pam didn’t tell people about it. She’d promptly circulate, one critic said, a reel or a post about her dancing somewhere (gyrating to the “Ale” or similar sound) or publicly shuffling some documents. But not her absence: not just from the province, from the country as well.
She announced her previous trips: to Fujian, China from February 4 to 6, 2026 and to Japan in the same month, from 24 to 27. No announcement of her latest travel.
Maybe she thought it was a personal trip and the public didn’t have to know?
Yet, given the manner her public relations operate, she must be a huge fan of optics. Or precisely she cared so much about what the public would think that she wanted to downplay, if not hide the foreign travel.
THE OPTICS THING. “How would the client look in social media?” must be a recurring question in the windmill of any PR outfit’s mind, the Capitol PIO not excluded.
The thrashing some fifth district mayors got last year when they “junketed” abroad must have instructed on the matter of public perception. The mayors were reported to be traveling to London despite the November 2025 floods in Cebu.
It didn’t look well that constituents struck by Typhoon Tino were still reeling from the beating while they toured foreign land.
ADVERSE SPIN ON TRAVEL consisted primarily on local leaders enjoying themselves even as their people were suffering.
Never mind if the disaster struck after the travelers had already left the country, as what happened in the mayors’ 2025 trip.
In Guv Pam’s current travel, the magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit Cebu — and neighboring areas in the Visayas with its epicenter in Bogo City — on April 6, or two days after her leave started.
Never mind if there was no casualty and inflicted small damage on property. And even if there were, there was already an acting governor, as Vice Guv Glenn could’ve immediately assumed, as his takeover was, by law, automatic and didn’t need a go-signal of any higher authority.
That’s what the mechanics of succession aim for: continuity of leadership and service even in the temporary absence of the chief executive.
But then the spin from the opposing camp — or “independent” critics playing devil’s advocate — could convert a leader’s innocent vacation into a serious offense of apathy and abandonment.
PAM CANNOT COMPLAIN. Her camp itself had done a few mischiefs of the sort being now directed at her.
AloJapan.com