Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Editorial: Stories told by recent surveys
LATEST results of public opinion surveys showed the Arroyo administration’s discouraging score compared with that of the opposition.
There was a telling reduction in the approval rating of the former in two surveys undertaken by Pulse Asia over a five month period in October 2007 and March 2008.
What this implied is that President Arroyo has not seriously and sincerely attended to the obligations and responsibilities she was supposed to undertake.
President’s rating
In October 2007, the President’s approval rating was 30 percent, this month it went down to just 23 percent.
The President’s trust rating in October last year was 23 percent, this month it was only 19 percent.
As for the disapproval and distrust ratings, in October the President got 39 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
In March, the ratings were 51 and 57 percent respectively.
Performance, issues
Meanwhile, the opposition, most of whom are members of Congress, received high approval and trust ratings in the respondent sampling nationwide of 1,200 adults with a “margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.”
The survey was conducted while the Senate was holding televised hearings of the NBN deal.
This implied that Filipinos are well aware of the performance of the Arroyo administration, the issues raised against it and the questionable actuation of the members of her Cabinet and her family that contributed to the erosion of the people’s approval and trust for her government.
Surprisingly, however, these did not arouse deep public umbrage.
The masses did not match their sentiment with extreme anger, unlike in the past, which resulted in the two Edsa uprisings.
The reason could only be because the people are also aware of the fact that the previous two government takeovers did not result in reforms and improvement in the quality of their lives.
High rating
On the other hand, a closer study of the opinion survey results shows that the highly rated senators got their scores based on personal and individual performance rather than as a political group.
Sens. Joker Arroyo, Edgardo Angara, Richard Gordon and Miriam Santiago, meanwhile, got low ratings because of PGMA.
