Editorial: Will PNoy ‘magic’ work in 2013?

THE latest Social Weather Station (SWS) survey result had Malacañang scrambling to grab bragging rights this week by immediately issuing a press statement to maximize publicity. Results of the survey conducted in August this year showed the net satisfaction rating of the administration of President Noynoy Aquino bouncing back to “very good.”

In figures, that’s +62, interpreted as statistically tying the Aquino administration’s best net satisfaction rating of +64 recorded in September 2010, or when PNoy was still riding high on his overwhelming victory in the presidential election that year.

“No other administration has had the consistently high ratings of the Aquino administration since the SWS began this poll in February 1989,” the Palace statement said.

This is an interesting development going into the midterm elections in May next year.

While the PNoy administration’s net satisfaction rating may yet dip in the coming months, surveys conducted since Aquino assumed power tend to support the contention that a sudden plunge is less likely to happen. Which should be music to the ears of PNoy’s politician-allies.

In a midterm election, endorsement of candidates by a President could mean the difference between winning and losing. Or at least that’s what candidates endorsed by the ruling Liberal Party (LP) believe.

Stalwarts of the party in Cebu, for example, seem to be gloating while announcing PNoy’s plan to actively endorse their bets here. How much such endorsement would mean in terms of votes for, say, LP gubernatorial bet Hilario Davide III is a good point of study.

Davide is up against Pablo John Garcia of One Cebu, a party that looks better-organized than the LP in Cebu province. Indeed, One Cebu party members are even now using the failure of the LP to put up candidates in many areas of the province as proof of its weakness.

But LP stalwarts in Cebu can also point to the fact that the party was even weaker organizationally in 2010 and yet it was able to put up a good fight in the gubernatorial race, with Davide “almost” besting One Cebu’s candidate then, the reelectionist Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.

The view of many political analysts re: the 2010 gubernatorial election result was that Davide gained much from the support Aquino got from voters in Cebu.

Will the Aquino “magic” still work in 2013 and finally carry Davide to victory, or will the organizational and logistical advantage of One Cebu defeat the Aquino “magic” once more, like it did in 2010? That question should be a good starting point of discussion, from mall coffee shops down to the neighborhood “barberohan.”