Steady on course

Last Monday’s BusinessWorld (BW) headline “Ratings low for Aquino” was accurate, in the sense that President Noynoy Aquino’s new net satisfaction rating of +42, based on 63 percent satisfied and 21 percent dissatisfied with his performance, in the Social Weather Survey of May 24-27, 2012, happened to be his lowest since he took office.

It was based on the SWS media release of June 11, titled “P-Noy satisfaction rating at Good net +42” (www.sws.org.ph), to which BW has right of first publication, which includes phrasing its headline in its own way.

In the first eight quarters of his term, P-Noy’s net satisfaction ratings have been +60, +64, +51, +46, +56, +58, +49 and +42.  SWS classifies net scores of +50 to + 69 as “very good,” and those of +30 to +49 as “good.”

With the new score of +42 solidly in the category of good, and not merely on the borderline, it seems to me that the President is steady on course.

The normal trend. In the United States, where opinion polling started in the 1930s, it is normal for a presidential rating to be very high after inauguration. Eventually the rating declines, and does not recover to the honeymoon level, even as it fluctuates up and down.

Thus the time-chart of the rating, from one president to the next, looks somewhat like the blade of an upturned carpenter’s saw—steeply vertical after the inauguration of each president and afterwards generally slanting downward. The chart of Filipino presidential ratings has the same general appearance; it is regularly published in BW, and found at the SWS webpage.

Cory Aquino, 1986-92. President Cory Aquino’s net ratings were very good or else excellent (+70 or more) at the start, but was only at +36 by October 1987, after she was a year and a half in office. Since that was after she had repulsed the August 1987 coup attempt led by Gringo Honasan, SWS saw the +36 as a recovery from most likely a lower level in mid-1987, when fuel prices were very high, and the coup plotters probably thought that her popularity had waned.

SWS did a rapid poll in Metro Manila at the end of August 1987, and privately briefed President Cory about it. (It was commissioned by Carlos “Sonny” Dominguez, her secretary of agriculture.) Upon being told that the survey respondents said they were more satisfied by her because she had defeated the coup attempt, she modestly commented: “Really?  And I thought the people didn’t like me anymore.”

Cory’s score recovered to +64 by February 1988, but later it gradually fell again. Her lowest level was +7, reached twice, first in November 1990 and then in April 1992 as her term was ending. For scores between +9 and -9, which are not significantly different from zero, SWS uses the term “neutral.”

Fidel V. Ramos, 1992-98. In opinion poll history, the best starter in the presidency thus far has been Fidel Ramos, who scored no less than +49 throughout his first two and a half years, up to late 1994.  Then in March 1995 he slid to +24, obviously due to the Flor Contemplacion tragedy. SWS uses the term “moderate” for the range of +10 to +29.

FVR’s score dropped even further to a tiny +1 in October 1995, at the peak of the rice price crisis—the government had made the mistake, early in 1995, of not ordering any rice imports, so as to claim “self-sufficiency” in the campaign leading to the May 1995 elections.

FVR’s score nevertheless recovered to a very good +50 by April 1997, then tapered off gradually, before finishing at a moderate +19 in April 1998, making him also the best finisher in the surveys so far.

Joseph “Erap” Estrada, 1998-2001. President Erap Estrada had very good ratings, all in the +60s, in his first four quarters, but in his fifth quarter he dropped to a moderate +28 (October 1999). From then on, his net ratings were either moderate or neutral, but never less than +5.

Erap ended with a +9 in December 2000, after his impeachment trial had started. SWS had no rating for him in January 2001, the month when he was ousted by People Power II.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, 2001-10. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had merely moderate or neutral scores in her first two years. Her sharp fall to -14 (“poor” is the term for the range -10 to -29) in March 2003 was due to the great public opposition to the Philippines’ joining “the coalition of the willing” for US President George Bush Sr.’s war in Iraq.  It was the first time that a Filipino president ever had a negative rating.

GMA left the Iraq-war coalition due to the public outrage when a Filipino truck driver in Iraq was taken hostage; then her rating rose back to positive. Her best rating thereafter was +30, achieved in March 2004—the one and only time her score reached the level of “good.”

From August 2004 to the end of her term, GMA’s scores were all negative, turning “bad” (between -30 and -49) several times and “very bad” twice (-50 in July 2008, and -53 in March 2010). She ended with a poor -17 in June 2010.

What about P-Noy? Notwithstanding the fact that each president faces unique circumstances, I would say that P-Noy’s popularity has fared decently. Its trend has definitely been close to the standards of Cory and FVR, which were obviously superior to those of Erap and GMA.

The new net satisfaction rating of P-Noy is not at all unfavorable, relative to what past presidents have accomplished. It happens to be less than the scores of his earlier quarters, but the differences are so normal that there is nothing to lose sleep about.

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.