PUBLIC RELATIONS AND POLITICS (WILL ENSURE SUCCESS)

Aristotle once said ‘Man is by nature a political animal’. Hmmm, I don’t know if it is a line that anyone would want to be proud of, but then again, it depends which animal you are referring to.In a conference i attended recently, the organiser asked me, if I preferred to be introduced as apolitician or a public relations practitioner – It was an easy question to answer – I am a publicrelations practitioner and I practice public relations in my political career.Having said that, for those who may not know what is the meaning of a politician, this piece of information may be useful. A politician is an individual who is involved in influencing public decisionmaking through the influence of politics or a person who influences the way a society is governedthrough an understanding of political power and group dynamics.Public relations practitioner is primarily responsible for managing the communications risks andopportunities of a business, both internally and externally. The public relations practitioner is alsoresponsible for communications to a wide range of stakeholders of including but not limited toemployees, shareholders, media, business influential’s, the press, the community and the public.You may fine many similarities on their responsibilities and please believe me the similarity goesbeyond that. I am saying this because I have been practicing public relations for the past 15 yearsand have also been involved in politics for the last 25 years. Having said that, now you can concludethat one of the reasons I got interested in politics was because of the enormous similarity betweenpublic relations and politics.Dr. Steve Iseman, a member of the Commission for Public Relations Education and a professor of communication arts/public relations at Ohio Northern University said that Public Relations andpolitics are two concepts firmly entwined since the beginning of recorded time. For evidence fromancient times, take a look at Aristotle and his schools of rhetoric that taught the art of persuasivecommunication and in more recent times we have Dr. Edward Bernays (father of modern day publicrelations) who believes that public relations is an art applied to a science provide a clear connectionbetween the two.Public relations plays a role in politics in many ways. The public relations function of publicity is agreat tool for gaining awareness for candidates and causes.

Effective usage of mass media, organizing special events and also introducing a candidate who isknown and who is close to the voters is actually a basic function of public relations although this lineis debatable but in almost all the developing countries this criteria is used. To put it in the mostsimplest way – at this point of time in Malaysia, a candidate cannot win an elections if voters don’tknow them personally (in my opinion political parties in Malaysia should identify their candidatesright now and place them in places that they should contest and begin their work with the localcommunities)Public Relations also could help voters to understand the candidates better and make themunderstand in their own language, public relations can develop messages to reach the targetedaudience. Certain issues need to be handled differently and public relations have thought us how todifferentiate the issuesA good publicity campaign can bring in the votes because it is through this publicity campaignsdifficult issues would be translated into simple words so that the voters would be able to understandthe issues better and make a decent decision. Creating effective messages is an effective way asnow a day voters have been assailed with so many information which has been manipulated. Adifficult issue like the increase of the petrol prices could be handled only if we get the messageacross to the people in a language that they understand best and easy. It is never how we wantthem to understand, but, it is how they want to understand the issue.One of the most important component of Public Relations is two way communications and in politicstwo way communications would be the make or break point for a politician to be successful or to putit straight to win elections. Voters want to communicate with their elected representative. PublicRelations use feedback or public opinion from the public as a guideline in implementing a project oreven to plan for a project. Infact, feedback, research and surveys are an integral part of PublicRelations. Once feedbacks are obtained, it would be easy to develop messages according to theneed of the community. PUBLIC RELATIONS excel in this area. Lets not forget, understanding publicfeedback or opinion is paramount when political parties draft their political standings, goals andobjectives – a failure to undertake that task, would be as good as losing in any elections.While it is hard to imagine a political campaign without publicity and persuasive messages, thefundamental partnership between politics and public relations at its highest level goes far beyondthat - but perhaps not in the way that many people might think.