By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
The party tricks are out, boys and girls! Expect the coming months until the May 2022 elections to be filled with a lot of gore from political mudslinging and skeletons walking out of the closet.
If you are a Filipino citizen eligible to cast your vote, then you hold a sacred duty and a great privilege to help decide the course of our nation’s future. A lot is at stake in the upcoming polls, so you and I must try not to fumble on making the right choices.
It’s not going to be an easy choice, though. We have an endless multi-party system going at all the elective posts, so it’s not as simple as a drive-thru pick between burger and fries and spaghetti and chicken. Heck, the ruling party in the country is split between themselves.
While all the information is now out on the web to aid our decision-making, the volume of fake news and propaganda that stir up our traditional and social media are oftentimes more viral and overwhelming. So, if you consider yourself confused, you’re likely in good company. That means you’re the voter who weighs your options and tries to sift through the lies that wrap around your candidate.
Sadly, it’s hard to find a perfect candidate. I doubt there’s even one of them who have nothing to hide – perhaps, a shameful past, a lapse in judgment, a shady deal or association, a whiff of corruption, or simply a measure of ineptitude.
Just when we thought we’d made our list of bets final, maybe a “Janet Napoles,” a “Michael Yang,” a dreadful oligarch, or even foreign forces get caught on video admitting to funding their campaigns. This week, I came across a “Pandora’s box” article naming dozens of prominent Pinoys in politics and business with offshore accounts. Troubling? Yes, if it’s dirty money or a product of our taxes. But then again, maybe nothing’s there; all is clean and legit except the dirt intended to poison our minds about a potential candidate.
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Sometimes, the confusion is planted in popular surveys. I’m not sure if you’ve come across the poll supposing that in a head-to-head battle for president between Mayors Isko Moreno and Sara Duterte-Carpio, the Manila mayor ends on top. It was a poll to which Pulse Asia lent its formidable name and published in a credible newspaper as an exclusive.
Similarly, another Pulse Asia poll showed that Moreno would capture 30 percent of the vote in a four-way race for president, trumping Davao City Mayor Duterte-Carpio and Senators Manny Pacquiao and Ping Lacson. But, again, only one respected national daily got the story.
Let’s be clear on this, though. Survey firms are neither corrupt nor coerced. Their commitment to computing the numbers the most accurately as they could is not only their word and bond but the only leg on which their enterprise stands on. So, survey firms put their stamp on polls because it is as statistically truthful as can be.
But let’s not miss the point that these surveys are contracted and paid for so the client (the one who commissioned the poll) can choose what question is asked, how many, and what the choices are in the field for the respondents to pick when it is conducted and so on. To his credit, Pulse Asia President Ronald D. Holmes clarified in a OneNews interview that a private entity commissioned both.
Bottom line, there won’t be just two candidates locking horns for the presidency and the equation cannot be accurate without other top contenders – ex-Sen. Bongbong Marcos and VP Leni Robredo. So polls structured this way cannot be realistic.
* * *SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View. Read current and past issues of this column at http://www.thephilbiznews.com
