Public satisfaction with President Aquino’s performance continued to slide in June, a week before he enters the second year of his presidency when he is due to deliver his second State of the Nation Address.
The decline in his public opinion poll ratings is a wake-up call for the President to jazz up his lackluster performance before the slump develops into a free fall. It is also a warning to him that bashing the Arroyo administration for its corruption cases, which was the focus of his government’s “straight path” campaign, has lost steam as a strategy to win continuing public support.
The results of latest survey of the Social Weather Stations from June 3 to 6, published by BusinessWorld, showed that the President’s performance rating dropped to merely “good” from “very good,” compared to his ratings in March and November last year. The results put the President’s satisfaction rating +46, with 64 percent of respondents indicating approval and 18 percent indicating disapproval. The rating was down from “very good” last March, when the President got a net score of +51 (69 percent satisfied, 18 percent dissatisfied), a rating that was already down from his best rating of +64 recorded in November 2010, six months after his election. The results indicate that the President’s rating has been sliding, although not yet cascading down the slope.
Presidential mouthpieces downplayed the continuing decline, with some officials noting that this was limited and national dissatisfaction did not increase. An apparently pro-administration commentator made the banal observation that the results were expected as “the honeymoon is over,” something other commentators had earlier noted. A Malacañang statement took consolation from the thought that the drop was not “massive,” but the greatest relief Palace propagandists derived from the ratings was cold comfort.
Respondents in Metro Manila gave the President a “good” net rating of +43, like the rest of Luzon at +48. The President got a “very good” rating among respondents in the hinterlands, in the Visayas and Mindanao, flashing the historical pattern that disenchantment with the administration starts in the national capital and the regions close to it. The results showed the President with a “very good” rating in the Visayas at +51, and also in Mindanao where he scored +54.
Net satisfaction in rural areas fell by eight points to “good” at +47, and urban net satisfaction remained “good” at +45 but fell by two points from +47.
Among the ABC class the President’s net rating rose by nine points to a “very good” +58 from the “good ” +49 in the previous quarter. But whatever gains he made in the ABC class were offset by the drop of his ratings in the D class. The results showed a seven-point fall from the “very good” +51 three months earlier. In class E, satisfaction fell by two points to a “good” +48.
Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the survey results were “better than expected.” He pointed out that the overall five-point decline was slower than the 13-point fall between November and March 2011.
But the continuing decline of the President’s net satisfaction rating represents a downhill trend and there was nothing to show in the results that the trend was being reversed. There is no basis for Lacierda to gloat that “We have arrested the decline from the drop in the last quarter when it was a huge 13 points.”
Lacierda also claimed that while the President’s nationwide satisfaction ratings have “slightly dipped,” the figure remained in the “good range.” He added, “It is also noteworthy that the level of dissatisfaction did not increase nationally, remaining at 18 percent.”
There are explanations that say the still “very good” ratings among the ABC class and urban class could be partly attributed to their satisfaction over the strong campaign of the administration through the news media of alleged wrongdoings in the Office of the Ombudsman. But the fact is that the initially “very good” ratings of the President, presumably due to his “straight path” campaign against corruption, have been eroded by shortcomings of the administration in delivering results on other issues, including inflation and alleviation of poverty.
Now that there are no new corruption cases blamed on the past administration to bash, the government has to create new demons. It has to show that it has more to offer than flogging dead horses.
The corruption cases involving the previous administration require a new push to be kept alive in the public consciousness. But the Aquino administration is beginning to be embroiled in the new issue of an emerging cronyism among officials close to the President. The opposition has started a move to investigate charges of alleged cronyism practiced by the President with officials close to him, identified as his classmates and shooting range buddies.
These charges were an upshot of the resignation of Jose P. de Jesus as secretary of transportation and communications over the allegedly lenient treatment given by the President to Land Transportation Office chief Virginia Torres, who had been recommended by the Department of Justice for investigation in connection with her intervention in the takeover bid of a company doing business with the LTO. The failure to proceed with the administrative case against Torres, the President’s shooting crony, was reported to have prompted the resignation of De Jesus.
This case has created tensions inside the administration and threatens to erode the credibility of the anti-corruption campaign of the President. This is not the way to arrest the plunge in his ratings.