Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Noli and Chiz lead Presidential Pulse Asia surveys

Perceptions can be wrong and downright stupid. All that Pulse Asia is doing is to confirm the existence of these perceptions, which if you examined it thoroughly, makes no sense at all.

So, why base one of the most important decisions in 2010 on what is basically a survey on perceptions that can be both wrong and stupid?

The most recent Pulse Asia Survey gives an indication that a very tight race for the Philippine Presidency will take place in 2010.

Out of the 1,200 adults polled by Pulse Asia, 216 or 18 percent said Vice President Noli De Castro would be their choice for President. The next most popular choice is Escudero, with 204 fans or 17 percent of the sample size saying they would vote for him. Erap remains a favorite among the masses with 15 percent or 180 people rooting for him and his good old buddy from the impeachment days, Senator Manny Villar, isn't far behind with 14 percent or 168 people going agog over his TV commercials on itik (ducks), OFWs, and buwa (hemmorhoids).

And Mar Roxas stands to be the biggest gainer in the latest Pulse Asia polls with 13 percent or 156 people saying they would vote for him if Presidential elections were held the next day. From just 8 percent, his popularity shot up 5 percent.

Between Noli and Mar is just a difference of 60 people or 5 percent.

Perhaps Mar can quip that he can easily make up for the difference by having some Capiznon's vote twice -- the punch line being that Aswangs (mythical vampiric creatures whose uppper and lower bodies separate at night) would be allowed to vote twice.

Anyway, this time around, the Pulse Asia survey included an indication of why the people answered the Presidential survey they way they did. And, it is rather confounding.

Here's an excerpt from an Inquirer article:
The most cited reason for the respondents' choices was the candidate's being helpful toward others (34 percent), particularly the poor (27.3 percent) and overseas Filipino workers (6.6 percent).

This was followed by the candidate's accomplishments (11.6 percent), being clean or not corrupt (7.1 percent), goodness (5.6 percent) and being a fighter (5.4 percent).

Now, granting that those who chose Noli over everybody else did so for the reasons stated above, how far would perception be from reality?

Noli De Castro, the head honcho of the Home Development Mutual Fund or Pag-IBIG Fund, spends several millions of pesos a day for radio ads featuring himself telling members how great a job he is doing for Pag-IBIG members.

The cost of just two or three radio spots on prime time AM radio is enough to build a house similar to that of the ones being built by the Philippine National Red Cross -- which has already built 15,000 such houses in typhoon stricken areas all over the country at NO COST TO THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT.

Each peso Noli de Castro spends to prettify himself for the polls is money taken away from Pag-IBIG Fund members who are private individuals that contribute part of their salaries every month in the hopes that one day own they can own their own home.

Moreover, if ever Pag-IBIG fund's home loan facilities had somewhat improved over the years, it wasn't because of Noli de Castro. It was because of the work of one Miro Quimbo. It was, also, because of the work of one Michael Defensor -- who at one time headed the HUDCC and the Pag-IBIG Fund's board.

If people puked when Mar Roxas cried on a noon time game show when he announced his proposal to Korina Sanchez (which, by the way, was one of the reasons why he was the biggest gainer in the surveys), then people ought to vomit too when they realize how much of a crook Noli de Castro is for using the money of Pag-IBIG Fund contributors to become the most popular Presidential candidate.

As for Chiz Escudero, what about him? How many people has he really helped in his former disrict in Sorsogon? Oh yeah, Annie Reyes who leads his minions in Facebook, might defend him and say that he has built so many roads as well as lit a lot of streets with the P490 Million in pork barrel allocations he got when he was a congressman.

Well, all I can say is, those roads and street lamps better still be there. I hope they haven't been washed out or destroyed by the typhoons that make their way to his district every year. I hope they haven't been damaged so that it wouldn't be necessary for the National Government to foot the bill for building more roads and installing more streetlamps that will get destroyed AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN.

If he had the brains to come up with a disaster mitigation program and funded that with his pork barrel, he wouldn't be spending his pork barrel on roads that get washed away every year and possibly provide funds for CORRUPTION every year. Perhaps if he had funded a disaster prevention program with his pork barrel, more people from Sorsogon would be able to lift themselves out of poverty and THAT WOULD REALLY BE HELPING THE POOR.

Joseph Estrada is just dreaming of running for the Presidency but the Constitution is clear about ELECTED Presidents not being elibible to run again.

And his best buddy, Senator Manny Villar, better do a good job at damage control or his dreams of a Presidency may just wane with a bang of a gavel at the Senate. I am pretty sure media organizations that are feeding off his billions in advertising money are just overly happy because of the current ethics complaint hearing against him. This has made it necessary for Villar to spend even more money to counteract the negative publicity brought on by the ethics complaint hearing which apparently involves charges of acquiring BILLIONS of pesos.

This, of course, is not to mention the tens of millions being spent to keep certain media personalities FRIENDLY, FAIR, IMPARTIAL, OBJECTIVE or just QUIET.

As for Mar Roxas. If bawling out over his proposal to Korina Sanchez worked wonders and gave him a 5 percent boost in the most recent survey, what will he do next to take the lead?

I think his rating will plateau and then start to dip if he doesn't trump his own performance.

So far his portrayal of himself as a caring and compassionate man fighting for more noodles for more noodles for public school students isn't creating a bee-line at the tills. He certainly can't go to Makati again and shout invectives at Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. He can adopt more quintuplets or maybe even conjoined twins, but what of it.

Ultimately, Roxas is a boring candidate and while he can pretend to be masa, people realize soon enough that he isn't and the realization turns into resentment because of the deceit it entails.

I wouldn't go so far as agreeing with New Philippine Revolution in saying that a THIRD FORCE will definitely win the the 2010 elections.

A third force, in my mind, should assume that there are at least two opposing forces in the coming 2010 polls. There isn't.

All the contenders are either so-called oppositionists (or opposed to Gloria, which is an easy and convenient but ultimately hollow position) or independents (which doesn't mean anything except that their real political connections with either the incumbent or enemies of the incumbent haven't been exposed enough).

All in all, as it stands, our choices for President in the 2010 elections remain bleak and abysmal if the Pulse Asia survey is to be believed.

Surveys ask the question, 'Who is popular?' but it doesn't answer the more important question of 'Who should lead the country?'

Keep that in mind, if you still have one.

3 comments:

Admin said...

BP,

You can post your comments now.

Let her rip!

Anonymous said...

dude (and i mean this in a gender-neutral sense), galing mo'ng sumulat and you make good poitns. problema lang mahaba... i read through it, but i doubt that a lot of other people will. if your goal is to really reach people, the sad reality of it is, you have to pander to their/our short attention spans. just my unsolicited two cents.

Admin said...

Dude, I'm a dude, so don't worry about this gender thing.

Thanks for the compliment on my writing.

Your unsolicited two cents really do make sense and I will try to keep my posts as short as I can.

But then again, I really can't guarantee it as sometimes I just tend to let my thoughts flow.

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