PDU30 vows out but remains most trusted PH leader
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Roa Duterte, vowed out of office on June 30, 2022 as the 16th President of the Republic of the Philippines but not before making his mark on history as the most trusted leader up to his last day in Malacañan since the post-1986 ‘People Power’ that saw the removal, by force and deceit, of an elected president.
Significantly, Duterte also handed his office to President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong/BBM’ Romualdez Marcos Jr., the son of President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, who was ahead in the counting of the presidential race at the time but ended up being forced to flee the Palace along with BBM and his other family members and lived his life in exile in Hawaii after ending up as a victim of a conspiracy by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the political opposition and factions in the US government and its minions in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP and the Philippine bureaucracy.
Based on the Second Quarter Survey of ‘Publicus Asia, Inc.’ held between June 16 to June 22, 2022, covering 1,500 respondents, Duterte left the presidency with still an average trust rating of 75 percent, a figure unprecedented in the country’s political history.
This translates to nearly 8 out of 10 Filipinos still believing on Duterte’s brand of leadership up to his last day in office.
His predecessor, on the other hand, the unlamented President Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino, Jr., vowed out of office with a net satisfaction rating of just 27 percent, based on the 2016 First Quarter Survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) held from March 30 to April 2, 2016.
This means that at the end of his term, nearly 7 of 10 Filipinos are disgusted with Aquino’s performance and which explains why Duterte was overwhelmingly elected during the 2016 presidential election, garnering more than 16 million of the votes or some 39 percent of the total votes cast.
PBBM was also sent a clear message by the Filipinos that the time has come for him to pursue the country’s use of nuclear power first started by his father, after 59 percent of the respondents say they now favor the Philippines ‘going nuclear,’ compared to just 47 percent saying they favor the building of more coal-based power plants.
In terms of number, Duterte overwhelmed his opponents, especially Interior and Local Government Secretary Manuel ‘Mar’ Roxas III, representing the country’s entrenched oligarchic interests and political opposition under the Liberal Party (LP), with a margin of some 7 million votes compared to Roxas’ 9.9 million votes.
A ‘guide post’ for the BBM presidency
Aside from Duterte breaking the pattern of slumping approval and trust ratings of an outgoing president, the same Publicus survey also showed that majority of Filipinos supported the policies and programs that he has initiated; they also gave high marks to government agencies who are in the forefront of implementing Duterte’s policy instructions.
As such, the results, released as they did when President Marcos Jr. (PBBM), has already started office, has the positive effect of ‘guiding’ his presidency on what Filipinos want to happen and expect, especially for the immediate future.
Accordingly, of the 25 executive departments surveyed where the respondents were asked to give their assessment of these departments’ performance since the start of the Duterte administration in 2016, 20 of them got an average approval rating of between 50 percent and 72 percent while the remaining 5 got less than 50 percent, namely:
Department of Human Settlement and Urban Development (DHUSD), 42, percent; Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), 44 percent; Department of Budget and Management (DBM), 48 percent; and, Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT), which both got 49 percent approval rating.
On the other hand, the three most trusted are the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) which also has the highest rating at 72 percent, followed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) at 69 percent and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) at 62 percent.
The result has also ‘vindicated’ the AFP when some of its officers conspired in the removal of two sitting presidents—the elder Marcos and Pres. Joseph Estrada in 2001—and in the launching of several coup attempts against President Corazon Aquino and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
The high trust rating of the AFP also contradicts the accusation of “gross human rights violations” regularly thrown its way by CPP front organizations and its urban operatives.
(The survey covered 29 government agencies but this article excluded the results for the Senate, Congress, the Supreme Court and the Commission on Elections as they are not part of the Executive Branch– Editor).
Among the legacy programs and policies that Duterte would be leaving behind, the Publicus survey also sent a strong message to PBBM that Filipinos want him to continue the following:
The ‘Build, Build, Build’ program, which was at the top of survey at 79 percent, followed by the improvement of the country’s Internet/telecommunication service at 78 percent, purportedly thru a link-up with Elon Musk’s ‘Starlink.’
And despite efforts by the CPP, the political opposition and their foreign funders to discredit it, 73 percent of the respondents still want the new administration to continue the ‘War on Drugs’ and Duterte’s ‘independent foreign policy, garnering 68 percent approval from the respondents.
Similarly, efforts by the above to discredit– and even defund- the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) 56 percent of the respondents say it must be continued (see related article in this issue).
Finally, PBBM was also sent a clear message by the Filipinos that the time has come for him to pursue the country’s use of nuclear power first started by his father after 59 percent of the respondents say they now favor the Philippines ‘going nuclear,’ compared to just 47 percent saying they favor the building of more coal-based power plants.
The building of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) was one of the major legacies left behind by the elder Marcos but its actual operation was stopped due to the political turmoil that plagued the country in the ‘80s. Subsequent administrations, especially Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos, decided to side with the local oligarchs by mothballing the BNPP and then privatizing the country’s entire energy sector built by the elder Marcos. As a result, the Philippines today suffers from having the highest per-kilowatt-hour cost of electricity in Asia at an average of $1.666/kwh for households in 2021, according to globalpetrolprices.com.
