Survey signals

The latest Social Weather Stations survey must be music to the ears of Malacañang and its spinmeisters. That poll, conducted between Sept. 4-7, 2011 and involving 1,200 respondents nationwide, indicates that the Aquino administration has managed to improve its net satisfaction rating to +56 from the +45 recorded last June. The improved score, while translating to a “very good” ranking in SWS parlance, as opposed to the merely “good” of last June, is still much lower than the +64 rating recorded during President Aquino’s first months in office.

Nevertheless, SWS’ Mahar Mangahas notes in his column (“Still smooth sailing,” Page A13) today, with its June 2011 +45 satisfaction rating, the Aquino administration “… already exceeded all of the general performance ratings scored by SWS on this matter from February 1989, mid-way in Cory Aquino’s time, to the present.”

Not surprisingly, when Pulse Asia released last month its own August 20-September 2 survey showing that President Aquino’s approval rating was 77 percent as against  4 percent “disapprove” and 18 percent “undecided,” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda enthused:  “The result is an affirmation that more than a year into the current administration, the people’s faith in their leadership has not wavered and has in fact become stronger.”

And now comes the SWS showing there has been an uptick of some 11 points in the administration’s performance rating, with some 68 percent of Filipinos saying they were satisfied with President Benigno Aquino’s general performance, and with only 17 percent saying they were dissatisfied, and 19 percent straddling the fence, neither here nor there on the question. The difference between the satisfied and dissatisfied percentages becomes the net satisfaction rating of +56.

Whether or not Malacañang trumpets these numbers, the implications of the survey results are easy to appreciate. What the numbers clearly affirm is that President Aquino does continue to enjoy the support of a majority of Filipinos, and that many of them remain patient with his administration even as its first year appears to have been marked by one too many gaffe and stumble, because they believe in the sincerity they see in his actions.

A striking finding in the survey thoug is that, since June this year, attitudes toward Mr. Aquino seem to have turned around the sharpest among the “masa” or class D of society, his net rating in this socioeconomic sector rising by 14 points to +58 from +44 in the previous quarter. His standing in the rural areas also climbed to +64 from last June’s +47. Perhaps this has to do with Malacañang’s continuation, even expansion, of the Conditional Cash Transfer Program, which directly impacts the country’s poorest families. Unfortunately, since the survey limited itself only to asking respondents how “satisfied or dissatisfied” they were with the “performance” of the President, that correlation remains a conjecture for now.

Certainly Malacañang has reason to take heart from the general upbeat mood reflected in the survey, but a victory jig may not be what’s called for. Rather than lathering on the rhetoric, the administration would do well to use the occasion to remind itself that much more herculean work lies ahead, and that the public’s expression of support at this time is less a contented pat on the back than an urgent push to get things moving forward, fast. The nation’s forbearance will not last, not if Mr. Aquino’s promises about fixing the rot in government and delivering concrete economic results do not materialize, or, worse, are supplanted by his own administration’s dalliances with incompetence, improbity and dim-wittedness.

Given the country’s galloping problems, the window for meaningful, transformative governance is a fleeting one. If the survey results are to be helpful at all, it should goad Mr. Aquino’s government not to tarry in a place of self-congratulation, but to ride the tail wind much of the country is giving it for now to achieve its best, most satisfactory stride toward the finish line.