PR Politics in Building Positive Repution of Political C ommunicator

Political public relations (PR) in government become a tool in managing government communication as well as the reputation of government itself. At the beginning of Jokowi's leadership, he perceived that performance of government PR was sluggish as a professional political communicator. Therefore, a new policy for recruiting Tenaga Humas Pemerintah (THP) is placed in ministries and is expected to become an accelerator of public communication. The paper discusses the existence of THP as a professional political communicator who acts as a tool to conduct political PR activities in building a positive reputation of the government and to implicate President's reputation. The author collects data through in-depth interviews and literature review. The results indicate that THP can overcome slack management of communication of public policy and its development program. THP use PR strategy including a proactive and reactive strategy with a two-way symmetrical PR model. The results of strategy produce positive image, increase public confidence and acceptance to development program and government policy, and implies the reputation of government and president as a political communicator.