Politics as performance: When public service becomes personal branding
Politics has always involved visibility. What has changed is the meaning of being seen.
In recent weeks, Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco has denied allegations of self-promotion following the presentation of photographs during a Senate hearing—images showing her prominently featured in tourism-related materials and activities. Her response is straightforward: these appearances, she insists, are part of her official mandate to promote destinations and support local tourism. The photographs, in this view, document work, not vanity.
From a sociological perspective, however, the issue is not reducible to intention. Whether or not self-promotion was intended misses the more consequential question: What kind of politics is being normalized when public office becomes inseparable from personal visibility?
Modern politics operates increasingly within a culture of performance. Public officials are no longer evaluated solely by policy outcomes or institutional processes but through images, narratives, and recognizability. Visibility itself has become a form of political capital. To be seen is to matter; to be absent from the frame is to risk irrelevance.
This is not unique to tourism, nor to any single administration. Yet tourism as a sector offers a particularly fertile ground for this transformation. Promotion, after all, is central to its mission. Campaigns require faces, symbols, and stories. The trouble begins when the face of the institution and the face of the official become indistinguishable.
Sociology reminds us that institutions derive legitimacy precisely because they are supposed to transcend individuals. When governance is personalized, authority shifts subtly from the office to the officeholder. What appears as effective leadership may simultaneously weaken institutional boundaries, making governance dependent on charisma, image, and individual appeal.
In this sense, the Frasco controversy is less about a violation of rules—many of which remain ambiguous—than about a deeper cultural shift. The contemporary public official is expected to be omnipresent: in posters, in social media, in curated narratives of action and accomplishment. Politics begins to resemble influencer culture, where credibility is measured through visibility and engagement rather than through deliberation or accountability.
This creates a structural tension. On one hand, officials are encouraged—sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly—to “own” projects, to brand initiatives, to embody programs. On the other hand, they are called to maintain the impersonal ethos of public service. The line between representation and self-promotion becomes not just thin, but unstable..
The danger here is not narcissism, but precedent. When personal visibility becomes standard operating procedure, future officials may feel compelled to compete not in terms of policy innovation but in terms of image saturation. Governance becomes a race for attention. Institutions fade into the background, while personalities dominate the foreground.
This is particularly significant in a country where political power has long been mediated by names, families, and familiarity. The personalization of public service risks reinforcing older patterns under the guise of modern governance. What looks like professionalism may quietly reproduce patronage logic—only this time, through aesthetics rather than favors.
A sociological reading does not demand moral condemnation. It demands reflexivity. The question is not whether Frasco violated a rule, but whether our political culture has quietly shifted toward a form of governance where legitimacy is increasingly visual, individualized, and performative.
If tourism is about showcasing the country, then the challenge is to ensure that the country—and its people—remain at the center of the frame.
Public service, after all, is not just about being seen. It is about knowing when not to be.
Prince Kennex R. Aldama,
aldamaprince@gmail.com
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