‘Excellent’ rating: a big joke

The latest SWS survey appears to be a big joke. How can a sampling of Filipino respondents rate Duterte “Excellent,” despite all the negatives associated with his administration?

In surveys, I understand the results can be influenced by many factors such as choice of respondents, sample size, phraseology and order of questions, integrity and competence of field workers, their supervisors, reliability of background-checking, etc. I wonder what among these variables were tweaked to come up with an improbable result?

I am aghast at how we Filipinos have become so dumb as to rate President Duterte “Excellent.” The following realities fly against Mr. Duterte endearing himself to Filipinos, and renders an “Excellent” rating incredible.

1) Surveys show how Filipinos dislike the Chinese. On the other hand, surveys show that Filipinos prefer the US over China by a long mile.

2) Yet Mr. Duterte is a staunch China ally who has allowed the Philippines and its institutions to be abused by Chinese officials and illegal entrants to the Philippines.

3) Mr. Duterte has also unilaterally abrogated the VFA with the US, which has weakened our defense system and cut us off from military aid.

These three factors alone will not endear Mr. Duterte to right-thinking Filipinos. How can they rate him “Excellent” when all that he stands for in foreign affairs is the exact opposite of what Filipinos detest (China) and prefer (US)?

Here’s more:

4) Farmers have been complaining about the deterioration of their farm income due to cheap imports.

5) The drug lords who are well-known to Mr. Duterte have not been arrested, and yet he had entertained some of them in Malacañang. Have we forgotten Mr. Duterte’s promise to eradicate the drug problem in six months?

6) Corruption, apart from drugs, is the declared nemesis of Mr. Duterte. Has he jailed the corrupt top officials of the Bureau of Customs, Bureau of Immigration, Bureau of Corrections, PNP, and others? Whatever happened to his promise to fire officials tainted with “just a whiff of corruption”?

7) Filipinos have been displaced by imported Chinese labor, worsening our unemployment rate.

8) Mr. Duterte has failed to curb the lawlessness of Philippine offshore gaming operators, which have subverted our immigration, tax, and criminal laws.

9) The thousands of EJK victims’ families and sympathizers will surely not consider him as “Excellent.”

10) The employees, families, and friends of conglomerates who have been bullied—ABS-CBN, MVP Group, Ayala Group—will surely not rate him “Excellent.”

Bottomline: SWS needs to reexamine its processes. There are just too many moving parts and possible human intervention to make this national survey credible.

Even industry icons in developed countries are not above practices of big-time cheating. The Volkswagen emission scandal in 2015 exposed the company’s cheating to make it appear that its cars were in compliance with the law. It installed sophisticated cheating software known as “defeat devices” in vehicles from 2008 to 2015 involving 11 million vehicles worldwide. Volkswagen’s CEO admitted the company’s guilt before US courts, and it was fined billions of dollars.

Is it possible for a cheating software such as a “defeat device” to manipulate surveys?

JUN GIL,

San Juanico, Ayala Alabang,

Muntinlipa City