COLUMN: OPINION ON PAGE ONE – The making of DU30’s 74 % – By Francisco S. Tatad

FIRST THINGS FIRST

THE latest reported Social Weather Stations survey gives President Rodrigo Duterte an incredible popularity rating of 74 percent, despite signs of a debased public confidence in his government.

The breakdown of our moral and constitutional order, which people directly attribute to DU30, makes it virtually impossible for the average citizen to accept this claim. For some people, this is the biggest fake news, and some concerned citizens, including not a few lawyers, are thinking of going to court to denounce the falsity of this claim. This effort may now be in motion.

Assuming the alleged survey is real, why was it done, and who ordered it to be done? Did it involve Malacañang? Did Malacañang need it as a propaganda tool to counter all the negative issues against the administration? But what are the chances of any local pollster conducting a truly honest poll about DU30’s performance? Given his drug killings and his standing threat to airbrush those who do not applaud the killings, how many brave souls would be prepared to confess to SWS or Pulse Asia their negative view of the DU30 government?

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Who works these polls?
I seriously doubt you’ll find a handful of individuals who would risk life and limb by expressing their honest views about the administration. If the tattooed son of the President, Paulo, who is now running for Congress, were listening to the conversation, he might end up listing those individuals with critical views of his father as members of a fanciful “Oust DU30 Movement.” This is why I have never taken seriously these propaganda surveys, and would instead propose that a truly reputable international polling firm, like Gallup or Pew, run a survey across the country to find out how many people truly believe the surveys conducted by SWS and Pulse Asia on anything.

This is not just because there are not enough people who will confess their honest opinions about the president. It is also because you cannot trust the pollsters themselves. I have said this before, and I will say it again — the data is unchanged. In other jurisdictions, a polling firm that is caught manipulating the data for whatever reason needs no public lynching: it bows out on its own, like the most honorable samurai. Not so here, and not Mangahas or his political merchandising station.

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In 1992, after I won my first Senate election on a pro-life platform, Mangahas came to a seminar-workshop for incoming senators in Tagaytay and tried to bamboozle me, personally, with the alleged results of an alleged SWS survey, purportedly showing that a senator who did not support the government’s contraceptives and population control program would not be “reelected” when he or she ran again. “You see, Mr. Tatad, there’s no such thing as Catholic vote in the Philippines,” he said. He was warning me about my chances for reelection, a full three years before I was to run again, not even a day after I had begun my first term as a pro-life senator. This was how arrogant and cocksure he was as a propaganda fraudster.

In 1995, I was reelected on the same pro-life platform, with flying colors. Then in the 2004 presidential election, Mangahas’ first cousin, the highly popular movie actor Fernando Poe Jr. ran for president as opposition candidate. I ran for senator with FPJ. Mangahas hired himself to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s camp. A big part of the country thought we won that election. The exit poll in Metro Manila, sponsored by ABS-CBN, showed Arroyo leading FPJ, but the Operations Quick Count, also sponsored by ABS-CBN, showed FPJ leading Arroyo. This created a problem for the sponsoring station. How could it possibly release two different sets of data from the same polling area, within the same timeframe, in the same election?

The solution was to massage the Quick Count data by taking some votes from the Visayas and adding them to the votes in Manila until GMA’s Quick Count votes caught up with the exit poll votes, which were fudged. SWS was never sanctioned after all these. Mangahas continued to operate as a pollster, and even write a column in support of his polling and various advocacies.

Now he is trumpeting DU30’s 74 percent approval rating.

Where did this phenomenal rating come from? Only the fraudster knows.

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So many zeros and a big number
To arrive at this improbably high approval rating, it would seem necessary for DU30 to first score high in the various programs on which his overall performance rests. These would include the extrajudicial drug killings, where thousands have died without due process or documentation; the unchecked traffic of crystal meth (shabu) from China and Sinaloa, etc., which has flooded the Manila customs zone, Subic, Clark, and Davao with illegal shipments, worth tens of billions of pesos and implicated some of the nation’s highest officials and even a presidential son who bears the tattoo of the Chinese triad on his back as proof of his alleged involvement; unbridled corruption in public works projects and in the importation of agricultural products due to the poor performance of the agricultural sector.

These would also include DU30’s position on important international law issues, such as our maritime arbitration case with China, his withdrawal from the Statute of Rome, purposely to avoid falling under the criminal jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court at The Hague on “crimes against humanity.” These would further include his offensive drivel against international personalities, his boorish behavior with women, and his blasphemies and profanities against God and the Catholic Church.

How is DU30’s rating on these individual issues? If he is scoring high on each or most of them, it should be quite natural for him to score high across the board. But if he is scoring a zero in all or most of these issues, even a portion of 74 percent would have no basis.

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In times of calamity
In fairness to DU30, most Filipinos are prepared to give him a high approval rating for “being always with the people” every time a calamity strikes. He is the exact opposite of his immediate predecessor, B. S. Aquino 3rd, who tried to avoid disasters and natural calamities, because he could not stand the sight of blood. In this respect, DU30 is the model president.
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ut among all the other issues, four seem to stand out for the average Filipino, and DU30 does not fare well at all. These are the drug killings, the relentless pillage and plunder of the people’s riches, the virtual surrender of Philippine-claimed territory to China, and DU30’s emergence as a “godless leader.” Of these four, the fourth seems to acquire the strongest traction as of now. A dear friend who has never been known as a devout Catholic has challenged his more devout friends to stand up for God, even if they cannot stand up for democracy and the constitutional order.

Given the moral fervor that has been kindled, the fairest and most reasonable rating thoughtful Filipinos can give a president who kills drug suspects without due process and without destroying the real drug trafficker; who is scandalized only when presented with proofs of the petty corruption by OTHERS; who is unmoved by the loss of national territory to a foreign government that supplies him his every biological need; and who thinks he is ready to take over the position of God, is a FAILING grade.

This isn’t quite a portion of 74 percent.

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