MAKATI-BASED businessmen rated the Office of the Vice President (OVP) with numbers opposite those from Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations. The latter two each polled 1,200 respondents nationwide; the Makati Business Club (MBC) Executive Outlook Survey for the second semester this year polled executives from 67 corporations or less than a fourth of the MBC’s 404 corporate members.
The MBC’s “limited” sample survey could be a factor why “67 wealthy businessmen in Makati cannot represent the sentiment of our people nationwide,” Binay camp’s Joey Salgado said as he brushed off the MBC survey findings. We are inclined to agree with him only on the likely assumption that the questions posed by the rating agencies differed from those MBC asked.
Maybe a significant number of respondents nationwide are clueless about the issues raised in the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee hearings on Vice President Jejomar Binay and his family’s alleged wrongdoing in Makati City, which allegations are obviously the basis of the OVP’s doormat minus 76.3 net score in the MBC survey. The Senate hearings, which started Aug. 20 last year and still counting, could be the culprit for the 31-“notch” drop in the OVP’s latest satisfaction ratings among businessmen.
Would a survey covering all 404 MBC executives appease the OVP? But everything is now water under the bridge.
MBC executives are not seen publicly in slums or bonding with the poor. But this does not make MBC prorich and antipoor! On the other hand, a civic-oriented outfit, Philippine Business for Social Progress, funded by Philippine corporations, is visible in the countryside.
One thing is certain though: There are pro-Binay, pro-Duterte, pro-Poe, pro-Roxas in the MBC and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They should reveal their true colors now!
—MANUEL Q. BONDAD, Barangay Palanan, Makati City