Public opinion ratings of the top five leaders of the country went haywire as a result of dramatic events related to the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona during the past few weeks.
Opinion poll survey results released by Pulse Asia this week revealed a profound shift in the balance of power among the three branches of the Philippine constitutional system in which the Supreme Court stood to have lost the most in public esteem and trust.
The poll also showed high trust ratings on the conduct of the trial, inspiring broad public confidence in the ability of the Senate impeachment court to maintain its independence from extra official pressures, including those from the executive branch and from public opinion.
The March 2012 Pulse Asia survey showed that the top officials of the land—President Aquino and Vice President Jejomar Binay—maintained their high approval ratings, with the President scoring a 70-percent approval rating.
Binay polled an enviable
84 percent, causing murmurs in Malacañang that the Vice President had not been energetically backing the President’s public attacks on Corona and the Supreme Court.
The biggest loser was Corona whose 14-percent approval rating was lowest compared to the heads of executive and legislative branches (the political departments).
Corona’s approval rating plunged from 38 percent in November last year after he received relentless battering from the administration-initiated impeachment trial that began on Jan. 16.
The fall of Corona’s ratings appeared to have pulled down the public trust in the Supreme Court, whose rating slipped to 37 percent in March from 53 percent last November, as the proportion of those who said they distrusted the high court increased to 21 percent in March from 15 percent last November.
Total annihilation
This result brought gloom to the Corona defense panel and triumphalist breast-beating from the administration, which has vowed to “strip naked” Corona in its total annihilation of the Chief Justice and members of his family in the media months ahead of the trial, during which the prosecution monopolized the presentation of evidence against Corona.
Against this background of the heavily lopsided occupation of media space by the administration side and threats of resurrection of people power in the event of an acquittal of Corona, it is understandable why the poll survey showed devastating collateral damage to Corona and the high court, resulting in the imbalance in the public approval for the tribunal vis-à-vis those of the other departments.
The impact of the scorched-earth attack on Corona and the court, abetted by the mass media, did not bring cheer to the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, some of whose members with civil liberties leanings have expressed concerns over the erosion of the independence of the judiciary as a result of the attacks by the executive and its legislative allies in the House of Representatives who were shown to have fast-tracked the impeachment articles against Corona to the Senate impeachment court for trial.
Clear winner
The clear winner in the survey was Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and the impeachment court, a redeeming feature of terrorizing and bullying by the executive in the heavy-handed deployment of its coercive powers (such as letting loose the Bureau of Internal Revenue hounds to track down income tax returns of respondents in the impeachment and using Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in the search for money-laundering evidence according to the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
Under this inquisitorial barrage of punitive assaults with powers of the state, how can anyone expect any target of this vindictive campaign to survive unscathed and emerge with flying colors in a popularity poll survey of performance in office?
What has emerged from this total extermination campaign is a mutilated corpse of a human being stripped of his dignity and reputation too gruesome to behold.
The survey found that Enrile topped the poll with a 71-percent approval rating. It came with a warning.
The approval rating of the President’s cohort, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. who engineered the ramming of the impeachment complaint through three hours in the House, dropped to 41 percent from 45 percent from November last year.
Pointed reminder
Enrile’s rating increased by 11 percentage points. It was a pointed reminder to the administration that the impeachment court was asserting its independence, that it was getting public encouragement to remain independent, and that the administration cannot be certain of rigging the outcome of the trial.
This signal followed the result earlier released that most Filipinos expected the senators to be fair and impartial, and more tellingly, that 58 percent of Filipinos (a small majority) believed that most Filipinos would accept and respect the impeachment court’s decision, whether they liked it or not.
That the President maintained his 70-percent approval rating did not cause a celebration in the Palace. It merely pegged his rating during the past five months.
In fact, his rating statistically dropped to 70 percent from 72 percent last November, and it would be delusionary to consider the rating as a huge approval of his cannibalistic campaign against Corona and the Supreme Court.
Wrong reasons
Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda gave the ratings a spin with the wrong reasons. He said the President’s “high ratings showed that the public was feeling the effects of the administration’s program against poverty and corruption.”
“We take results as reinforcement to push for economic and institutional reforms to achieve inclusive, equitable growth,” Lacierda said. He didn’t offer any concrete proof of accomplishment in the administration’s centerpiece project, the public-partnership program.
It might be easier to build ovens in which to incinerate the corpses of its anticorruption targets, in the same way Hitler’s Nazi executioners exterminated Jewish inmates in their Final Solution at Auschwitz, to prove Mr. Aquino’s absolute honesty and the validity of his nostrum “kung walang corrupt walang mahirap.”