‘Norwegia’ forever? Palace blames ‘typo’

PCOO Assistant Secretary Lorraine Marie Badoy. INQUIRER.net / CATHY MIRANDA

The mysterious country was last spotted on Wednesday on the Facebook page of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), where a post showed President Rodrigo Duterte conferring the Order of Sikatuna to outgoing Norwegian Ambassador Erik Forner for his service as the “representative of Norwegia.”

Netizens were quick to call out the latest PCOO boo-boo with memes that poked fun at the nonexistent country of “Norwegia.”

The post was eventually corrected, but Communications Secretary Martin Andanar had yet to issue a comment on the issue.

PCOO Assistant Secretary for New Media Lorraine Badoy defended the flub as a mere “typo” and challenged a netizen’s comment on the agency’s huge budget.

In 2018, the PCOO received a budget of P1.38 billion, which was 4.6 percent higher than its 2017 budget of P1.32 billion.

Other critics created memes that referred to Norwegia as within spitting distance of Wakanda, the fictional African nation of Marvel Comics superhero Black Panther from the movie of the same title.

“It’s the sister country of Genovia,” one netizen pointed out, referring to the kingdom in the 2001 movie “The Princess Diaries.”

Former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay, however, chose a more serious take on the issue. “‘Norwegia’ is this administration’s best attempt at distracting Filipinos from its failure to protect Filipino fisherfolk at Scarborough Shoal. It’s like: we’d rather be seen as shamelessly incompetent rather than uncaring. Truth is, they’re both,”  he said on his Twitter account, @fthilbay.

But Norwegia exists, protested Jethol Coral Paanod on social media. Wikipedia’s Polish and Bahasa Indonesia entry on Norway spells the country’s name as Norwegia, he explained, to which other netizens retorted: “Then the PCOO post should have been in Polish or Bahasa Indonesia for it to be correct!”

“Where is Norwegia?  Right beside Mayon Volcano, of course—in Naga!” one netizen said, referring to PCOO Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson’s post that relocated the volcano from Legazpi City in Albay to Naga.

Still another mocked Malacañang and referenced it as the venue for the grand debut of President Duterte’s granddaughter last year.  Using a logo that says “Malacañang Events and Catering Services,” the netizen invited readers to “join the (celebration) of a new milestone in Philippine-Norwegian relations with a trip to Norwegia.”

The factual lapse was the latest in a series of flubs and errors committed by the PCOO, for which Andanar had issued a mix of apology and justification in a radio interview in September 2016.

‘For me, I’m just a human’

“For me, I’m just a human who makes mistakes, but at least I did not make any mistakes involving money, right?,” Andanar said. “Small things we can [let go] though I’m not saying that our mistakes were small,” he added.

The agency’s blunders included the Philippine News Agency’s use in August 2017, of an opinion piece from Xinhua News Agency, China’s official press agency, that described as “ill-founded” the United Nations’ tribunal ruling that favored the Philippines on the South China Sea dispute.

The agency also erroneously used the logo of Dole pineapple for its story on the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole), with Andanar saying that it was a Google search gone wrong.

In March this year, Andanar ordered a probe into the atrocious grammatical errors printed on media IDs, whose draft, he said, he did not get to see. —WITH REPORTS FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH

Source: Inquirer Archives