Don’t visit the website of the Office of President (www.op.gov.ph). It’s inaccessible and it contains the warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer.

Unable to access the site, a blogger, Ferrum Mann tried accessing a cache and this is what he got: “The website at webcache.googleuser.com contains elements from the site www.macapagal.com which appears to host malware – software that can harm your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that contains malware can affect your computer.”

The status of the OP website mirrors the standoff in the rivalry of the two factions in the Aquino administration. It’s also a manifestation of the disarray in the first week of the Aquino presidency.

Last Friday, the third day of the Aquino presidency, at about 4 p.m, I visited the OP website. I was dismayed to see that it still had Gloria Arroyo as the president complete with her biography and pictures of her presidential sorties.

I would understand the disarray if Aquino’s government is revolutionary just like his mother’s in 1986 that came about after People Power One terminated two decades of the Marcos regime.

But no. Noynoy ran and won in an election held last May 10. He had more than a month- a- half to form a team that would start running the government starting noontime of June 30, 2010.

People all over the world, when accessing the website of the Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines, should see the change in the country’s leadership.

I texted some friends in the media team of President Aquino about Arroyo still the president in the OP website.

I was told that they immediately instructed the staff who had been running the website of the Office of the Press Secretary to institute the necessary changes but nobody had the password.

Further inquires revealed that the site was being hosted by the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology. The person who holds the password to the OP website was a certain Lia Bautista who is out of the country.

Information details about Bautista in LinkedIn says she is currently consultant at Office of the President. It also says she was head of the Information and Communications Technology Unit and International Media at the Office of the Press Secretary and “SA for IT at Office of the Communications Director.

Unable to contact Bautista, they disabled the OP website at about 5 pm.

IT experts can set up a website in less than hour. Surely there are IT experts among Aquino’s people, who had an active new media group during the campaign. Why are they not setting up a new website for the new President?

One of Aquino’s advisers wearily replied, “Who has the mandate to order the setting up of a new website for OP?”

Last June 29, when Aquino presented members of his cabinet to media the day before his inauguration, he was asked about his press secretary and he said he just came from a meeting and he said no decision has yet been made who will be the Communications Director, the title of the official who would head his media office.

He reiterated what he had announced earlier about re-organizing the Office of the Press Secretary into a communications group. Aquino’s cousin Maria Montelibano, head of Radio-TV Malacañang during Cory Aquino’s presidency whom everybody defers to on media matters, said “we believe there is a need to re-organize government media organizations and structures to respond to the needs of the times where there must be active participation of the citizenry with the presidency utilizing crowd sourcing and technology.”

Montelibano further said, “Structures must follow the vision, intended mission and objectives.”

Reliable sources say Aquino had asked broadcaster Ricky Carandang to be communications director and Inquirer columnist Manolo Quezon to be in charge of the content of the messaging. They would be working hand-in-hand with Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda.

Montelibano, however, wants Herminio “Sonny” Coloma for the position, sources also said. Coloma was formerly undersecretary in the Department of Transportation and Communications during Cory’s presidency. He writes a column for Businessworld.

Asked for confirmation, Montelibano simply said, “Sonny Coloma is part of the communications team I worked with during the campaign.”

Media have reported about the rivalry between the Liberal Party/Hyatt 10 group and the Samar Avenue group composed of the Kamag-anak Inc. and other groups not so enamored with the other camp.

Carandang and Quezon are identified with the LP/Hyatt 10 while Montelibano and Coloma are with the Samar group.

A source said it’s doubtful if Carandang and Quezon would work with Coloma.

A source said Aquino is trying to find a Solomonic solution to the standoff over the position of Communications director. Meanwhile, many things stand still in the Office of the Press Secretary