A fly-high moment!

AS PRESIDENT Aquino, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Moro Islamic Liberation Front chair Murad Ebrahim, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Quintos-Deles and other dignitaries left the Kalayaan Gardens after the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, the Malacañang band played an unusual recessional, the song that goes:

Fly high!

Blue eagle, fly

And carry our cry

Across the sky…

It is the song “Blue Eagle the King,” composed (music and words) in 1938 by 20-year-old Raul Manglapus for his alma mater, Ateneo de Manila.  It seems to be an Aquino favorite.  I recall it as a processional/recessional for his inauguration in 2010, and when he went to the Luneta one Rizal Day.  I doubt if it was ever used for another president; Manolo Quezon would know.

That historic afternoon was indeed a fly-high moment for all Filipinos everywhere, and all our friends from other lands, to sing of triumph of peace over war, of cooperation over divisiveness, and of trust over suspicion.  Let us all congratulate the government and the MILF for their sincerity in seeking peace.

Opinion polling and peacemaking. It was a pleasure to be invited, with SWS vice president Linda Guerrero and board member Tony La Viña, in recognition of surveys done in behalf of the Asia Foundation (a former member of the International Contact Group) and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. I must also cite

Vladymir Licudine, SWS expert in Islamic Studies, as our key staff member on Mindanao surveys.

SWS has been doing surveys not only in Mindanao as a whole but also in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao specifically, and in the various potential Bangsamoro areas as well. The SWS survey findings will be open to the public in due course; the research must aid the peace process, not interfere with it. The SWS surveys are a continuing, rather than a completed, activity.

A democratic Bangsamoro. Yet scientific opinion polling is not technically difficult.  There need be no secrets about the beliefs, attitudes, and opinions of the Bangsamoro people, as long as there are

scientifically-grounded pollsters with the proper motivation and discipline to discover what they are.

It all starts from being willing to listen to the voices of everyone.  It was very good to hear Murad refer inclusively to the Moro National Liberation Front, the indigenous peoples and the Christian communities of Bangsamoro, and say that the aim is, not for an MILF government, but for a democratic Bangsamoro government.  Opinion polling works for democratic governance.

Authoritarians reject it, since it gets in their way.

And, of course, the people’s sentiments will not all be the same.  Opinion research typically discovers many differences—some anticipated, some surprising.  It will reassure analysts about things they have already known, and make them aware of things that they did not really understand. Coping with the differences among the people is what democracy is all about.

There are no cultural barriers to opinion polling.  Religion is not a barrier—there are many polls in Islamic Indonesia, Buddhist Thailand, and multi-ethnic Malaysia.  The lack of peace and security is a challenge rather than a barrier—there is continuous polling in Palestine, Israel and Egypt.

Scientific opinion polling is not overly expensive. There should be a multiplicity of doers, since their findings are bound to converge.  It will produce clarity rather than confusion.  Clarity will promote compromise rather than intransigence.

Bangsamoro statistics. The Bangsamoro should take the initiative in generating its own statistics, and not wait to be included in the work agenda of the national statistical agencies (see my “The Bangsamoro deserves statistics,” Opinion, 10/13/2012).  I am worried that the newly-started Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) may try to dictate, i.e., limit, the types of data to be collected about the Bangsamoro area and its people.

In the first place, Bangsamoro social scientists should develop their own survey questionnaires, in the relevant languages (Tausug, Maguindanao and Maranaw are the minimum SWS uses for the area).  With the National Statistics Office incapable, up to now, of shifting its survey implementation from English to Filipino and other major Philippine languages, how long will it take for it to adapt to the Bangsamoro languages?

Secondly, Bangsamoro statistics will surely call for subject matters that go beyond the traditional experience of the PSA. The Bangsamoro should not have to wait, for instance, for the Food and Nutrition Research Institute to prescribe a minimum nutritional diet in terms of  halal  foods.

The Bangsamoro should schedule the production of its own new statistics as often as possible—annually at least, and preferably quarterly.  It should not be bound by orthodox, i.e., slow-moving and expensive, measurement techniques.   Statistics about the current conditions of the Bangsamoro people are bound to show their great deprivation relative to people in other regions.

Aquino recognized this when he said that the government will help the Bangsamoro “to catch up.”

But statistics is not a one-time activity.  It is important to generate new statistics as rapidly as possible, so as to identify programs that are working (and reinforce them) and those that are not (and get them modified accordingly).  Statistical barometers are not for mere decoration.

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