Aquino on SONA leak: 'I don't have bias, so should my officials'

President Benigno Aquino III on Saturday apologized to reporters for the alleged leak of a copy of his speech moments before he delivered his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July 26. Aquino said he has already tasked a team to look into claims that broadcast network ABS-CBN somehow got an advanced copy of his speech, so that the full text was posted on the Facebook page of its news arm shortly after the President delivered his SONA before Congress. "Since I don't have a bias, my people should not have a bias also," Aquino told reporters at the Quirino Grandstand, after the unfurling a giant photo mosaic of her mother, the late President Corazon Aquino. "So if there was (a leak), I apologize," he added. Aquino said he was puzzled himself at how the final version of his speech might have leaked, saying he and his team were even making last minute changes to it before the SONA. "I would be very very surprised if anybody got a hard copy of what we were doing," he said, adding that there was only one person designated to distribute advance copies of the speech to lawmakers and senior members of his party, the Liberal Party. He did not discount the possibility that a copy fell into the hands of someone not authorized to have it. "[Officials who were supposed to receive] said they never received their copies. So iyon ang dapat namin i-fine tune, kasi baka naman may nakaagaw na kopya na addressed sa ibang people (So that’s what we need to fine-tune, because someone might have grabbed a copy addressed to other people)," he said. Malacañang's "Communications Group" — a restructured Office of the Press Secretary — has yet to be formally created, but key Malacañang officials making up the team, including former ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) anchor Ricky Carandang, have already begun speaking to media on behalf of the administration. Accusations of "favoritism" were hurled against Malacañang after presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda on two occasions made announcements on ANC and ABS-CBN's radio dzMM about Aquino's executive orders, without alerting Palace reporters and when he could have made it over government-run Radyo ng Bayan. On Saturday, Aquino stressed he would not tolerate his officials who would be favoring one party over another. "You were all witnesses to the fact that I entertain anybody if I can. So regardless if it's a national organization or regional or provincial organization, wala tayong pinipili (we don’t favor anyone)," he said. He said the perceived "blunders" of his communications group could be due to the fact that it has yet to perfect the system of dealing with media. "If at all, baka fine tuning pa ng sytems and procedures ang kailangan (maybe what’s needed is fine-tuning of systems and procedures) and I've called their attention to it," Aquino said. Aquino's new Cabinet earlier earned the ire of media after some of them got involved in heated exchanges with reporters. These Cabinet officials included Lacierda, who made the media wait for a delayed briefing with no explanation, and Education Secretary Armin Luistro, who told off reporters that they were not being helpful in asking too many questions about the government's sex education program. The incidents later prompted Cabinet officials to undergo a media relations training program, for pointers on how to handle reporters even under pressure.— Mark D. Merueñas / JV, GMANews.TV