Philippine Political Surveys Are Fatally Flawed

Long before the official campaign period started,  local opinion polling firms had been coming out with survey results  purporting to show voters’ preferences of  declared and undeclared candidates for the presidency, the vice-presidency and the Senate. Because of their frequency and number, these polls have shaped perceptions, here at home and abroad, of the relative standings and chances of the candidates.                  

Candidates, would-be candidates and political parties have taken these survey results at face value as scientific, accurate and totally above-board. The mass media have passed them on freely without any critical analysis, and not a small portion of  the public appears willing to accept them as gospel truth.  Public discussion of   the merits of the candidates and their respective political platforms, if any, has thus been thrust aside in favor of this undivided attention to the surveys.     

This gives the polling firms an excessive and unaccountable power they have not earned. There is no guarantee that this power will not be used to tax the public interest; there is, in fact, some doubt that the common good ever figured in the recent surveys. Based on the existing trade literature, not only is the methodology of the surveys fatally flawed, the pollsters have also failed to rise to the high professional and ethical standards of opinion polling in the more advanced countries, notably the United States. Thus, while claiming to serve the public interest, the  surveys  may have, in fact, only served some special political and commercial interests. 

We submit:

First, that in these surveys local pollsters have used methodologies and techniques that are flawed and discredited and have long been discarded in the United States, where public opinion polling was invented and is now a billion-dollar industry.

Second, that local pollsters have ignored the strict ethical and professional standards that polling associations and professional pollsters elsewhere regard as sacred and inviolate.

Third and finally, that in reporting the survey results, the media have  become unwitting purveyors of false findings to the detriment of the public and the electoral process.  Unsuspecting journalists have  failed to ask the necessary questions that in the US and other countries are standard prior to publishing survey results.

The business of public opinion polling assumes that by getting the opinions and preferences of some 1,500 to 2,500 citizens, pollsters can capture accurately the opinions and preferences of  94 million people or 48-million voters.

But “there are no perfect surveys. Every survey has its imperfections.  The world is not ideally suited to our work,” says Reuben Cohen, former president of the American Association for Public Research (AAPOR).  Thus not even the best pollsters dare to claim that opinion polling is a science.

Given its limitations,  every poll survey must be done with extreme care. This is the duty of every pollster, and it is our right ---the nation’s right --- to demand the highest professional and ethical standards from the polling firms. 

Sad to say, these standards have not been observed at all in the recent surveys.

I put on exhibit first the practice of using face-to-face interviewing in the surveys. This is the standard method used by local pollsters for eliciting responses from survey participants. They say so in their own reports.

In this survey method, respondents are tracked door-to-door and interviewed by the pollsters’ personnel in the field. They are asked to respond to the pre-set questionnaire and shown pictures of candidates as appropriate.

In the past, face-to-face interviewing was viewed by US opinion research experts as an appropriate method for conducting opinion surveys. It ostensibly allowed them to select the “right” respondent to be interviewed. After major failures, however – notably, the erroneous forecast of Thomas Dewey’s victory over Harry Truman in the 1948 US presidential elections– this survey method was abandoned, so much so that reputable pollsters in the US have now discarded it altogether. 

Why was this? We invite some experts to tell us why. Chava Frankfort-Nachnias and David Nachmias in Research Methods in the Social Sciences write: “The very flexibility that is the interviewer’s chief advantage leaves room for the interviewer’s personal influence and bias.”   

The pollster Kenneth Warren in his book, In Defense of Public Opinion Polling, says: “The cons of door-to-door interviews far outweigh the pros…Because of the sensitivity or personal nature of some questions, interviewers, because they were placed in face-to-face situations, have admitted that they sometimes guessed or fudged responses…These problems are a major source of bias in personal interviews, causing significant contamination of the poll data.”

These methodological and practical problems, according to Warren,  doomed face-to-face interviews forever. By 1980, nobody in the US wanted to pay for this type of  “fatally flawed and grossly inaccurate” surveys.

This, however, seems to have had no persuasive effect on our local pollsters.

A second glaring weakness is the extensive and general use of quota sampling to create “a representative sample” of the Philippine population.  In quota sampling, survey respondents are picked from different types of people (e.g. by age, sex, religion, income) and various predetermined areas (e.g. region of country, as well as urban or rural).

This method is the most familiar form of non-probability sampling. It is supposed to mirror the same proportions in the targeted survey populations, but doesn’t. And it proved to be an earth-shaking failure in 1948 after three leading US pollsters--Gallup, Roper and Crossley—erroneously called the US presidential election in favor of Dewey instead of Truman.  In the United Kingdom, where it persisted, it was blamed for the failure of the pollsters to predict Prime Minister John Majors’ victory in 1992.

“Quota sampling could never work in practice,” says Professor Warren. “Not only could pollsters not know the exact demographics so they could pick a representative sample that actually reflected the proper demographical proportions, but it was naïve to think that the interviewer could manage to interview the precise people needed to fill each quota.”

Thus today, reputable US pollsters rely almost exclusively on probability random sampling to create a “representative sample,” says Warren.   

Why then do local pollsters continue to  use quota sampling and face-to-face interviewing for their surveys? Why haven’t they adopted probability random sampling, which has protected US opinion polls from using contaminated data? 

Of course, the same methodology is also still used in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America.  But that is no excuse, given the high claim our local pollsters make for the supposedly advanced state of knowledge in their trade.       

The situation would not have been so bad were the surveys meant simply and solely for the private consumption of clients. But as opinion polls have become a hot commodity and the stakes and rewards have gone up, pollsters have been led to make bigger and bigger claims for their products and thrown standards out the window.

Professional standards are virtually non-existent in the local opinion polling industry. No law regulating the conduct of opinion polling, and no professional association of pollsters either to set and enforce standards of conduct and standards of disclosure and ensure “the reliability and validity of survey results.”

There is a professional association of market research firms--MORI (Market Opinion Research Inc), but market research is markedly different from public opinion research. Consequently, opinion polling firms can pretty much do what they please. They set their own standards and parameters for the conduct of their polls. And they release findings virtually at will.

In the US, public opinion polling is not regulated by law but is self-regulated through the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).

Both associations provide the principles and standards of disclosure, which include, among others, the following:

 

1.   Who sponsored the survey, and who conducted it?

2.   What is the sampling method used?

3.   What is the population that was sampled?

4.   What is the size and description of the population that serves as the primary basis of the survey report?

5.   The exact wording of questions asked, the order in which they were asked, the text of any instruction or explanation to the interviewer or respondent that might reasonably affect the response.

6.   A discussion of the precision of the findings, including estimates of sampling error and a description of any weighting or estimating procedures used.

7.   Which results are based on parts of the sample rather than the total sample, and the size of such parts.

8.   The method, location and dates of data collection.

If we had such counterparts to these private associations, we would not be seeing the extravagant claims for opinion surveys and the excesses by pollsters that we see today. We would have polling firms that are a lot more modest about their work, and a lot more careful about their pronouncements regarding the opinions and sentiments of our 94 million people. 

And we would not be searching in vain on their websites for their survey samples and how they were created, the names of politicians they had invited to participate in the survey at P100,00 for every “rider question” about themselves, who accepted the invitation, and what “rider” questions were thrown in.

We cannot complete this presentation without discussing briefly the unwitting part the media have played to allow opinion poll results to dominate  public perceptions of the campaign. This would not have been possible if dubious opinion polls had not been reported so energetically in the media without an iota of analysis. The public would have had a better appreciation and understanding of public opinion polling had the media been a little more critical and vigilant.

In the US, the media normally ask the following 20 questions before publishing the results of any opinion poll:

1.   Who did the poll?

2.   Who paid for the poll and why was it done?

3.   How many people were interviewed for the survey?

4.   How were those people chosen?

5.   What area (nation, state or region) or what group (teachers, lawyers, Democratic voters, etc.) were these people chosen from?

6.   Are the results based on the answers of all the people interviewed?

7.   Who should have been interviewed and was not?  Or do response rates matter?

8.   When was the poll done?

9.   How were the interviews conducted?

10.                What about polls on the Internet or World Wide Web?

11.                What is the sampling error for the poll results?

12.                Who’s on first?

13.                What other kinds of factors can skew poll results?

14.                What questions were asked?

15.                In what order were the questions asked?

16.                What about “push polls”?

17.                What other polls have been done on this topic?  Did they say the same thing? If they are different, why are they different?

18.                What about exit polls?

19.                What else needs to be included in the report of the poll?

20.                So I’ve asked the questions. The answers sound good.  Should we report the results?

The reason for asking these questions is plain enough: there are good polls and bad polls. It appears that every poll should be judged guilty until proven otherwise.  Of course, some polls are more reliable than others.  But the following key ingredients are needed:

·      Adherence to Professional Standards and Ethics

·      A Well-developed, Intelligent, Yet Doable Research Design

·      A Carefully Drawn and Used Representative Sample

·      A Well-designed Questionnaire

·      Well-trained and Professional Interviewers

·      Careful Coding and Tabulation of Raw Poll Data

·      Thorough and Insightful Analysis

Sadly, these ingredients are absent in local polling. Local pollsters have sacrificed rigor to the demands of clients and interest groups or to other considerations. Whether it is the polling firms or their clients who are responsible, we are disturbed by the effort to systematically and deliberately manipulate public perceptions of the candidates in order to narrow down the people’s choice to a few candidates, even before the start of the race.

We are shocked that survey methodologies, techniques and practices that have failed and been completely discarded in the United States and other advanced countries are being used in local opinion surveys without any mention of their limitations.

We deplore the use of these questionable survey findings to condition the minds of the Filipino public and the media who have grown to trust opinion polls, largely because of hype.

To gain full understanding of the deficiencies of local opinion polls, what damage they have inflicted and how they can be corrected, we shall now invite one or two well-known US survey experts to critique local polling practices and submit appropriate recommendations.

In the meantime we are calling on the media to desist from giving further uncritical publicity to these dubious local polls and make an earnest effort on their own to correct or at least mitigate the harm already done.  We invite the media to follow the actual campaign of the various candidates and see for themselves how it is being received on the ground.

Finally, in order to come up with correctives and determine  culpability, if any, for the harm done to the public by irresponsible opinion polling, we are asking a panel of legal experts to propose the appropriate legal and professional remedies.

Thank you for your attention.

*** This paper was originally presented at the Fernandina Media Forum in Club Filipino, San Juan, on 17 February 2010.

How morally and intellectually fit are the candidates?

With so many overcrowding the 2010 presidential race, it may not be so easy to avoid  a no-holds-barred campaign.  Negative campaigning could rule the day as all gloves come off and the parties expose and exploit each other’s dark secrets. Is that good or bad? Bad perhaps for those who have a lot to hide, but probably good for us who need to know more about our candidates.

 

If we can but agree that government is not entertainment, that an election is not a beauty contest, and that more than popularity and charm are needed to run a government, then we should welcome knowing more about the hidden lives of our candidates.  

 

Until now,  all we know is their media image. Unverified and unverifiable surveys and uninhibited hype have tried to perpetuate these images in lieu of the truth about the candidates.  Do we really know what kind of human beings they are?  Are they morally and intellectually fit for the office they seek?

 

We do not seem to care.  It seems  enough for us to be able to say that Manny Villar used to be poor, that Noynoy Aquino is the son of Ninoy and Cory Aquino, that Gibo Teodoro is the candidate of President Arroyo, that Erap Estrada  counts on the masa, that Mar Roxas is married to Korina, that Edu Manzano is a game show host, that Loren Legarda has great billboards, that Jojo Binay runs Makati, and that their fate depends on the surveys.    

 

But if we really want to be part of the electoral process,  we need to know, at the very least, the candidates’ moral character and  professional competence.  This is a conditio sine qua non for our responsible and intelligent participation in the process.  

 

First, character.  This is the first building block of leadership. It defines a person’s personality, his or her relationship with others, his or her private and public life.  If he or she has no control over his or her carnal appetites, that person is likely to have no control over his or her appetite for power or material wealth.  If a person thinks nothing about his or her marriage vows,  that person is not likely to think any better of his or her oath of office.  If a person is a serial adulterer or one of loose moral character, he or she is not likely to be the soul of honesty, purity or justice in public office  or anywhere else.

 

            It is imperative, therefore, that the candidates’ personal  lives be known to all, beginning with their state of health, mental and physical.  In that respect, we could perhaps adopt the admirable practice in the United States, where despite the society’s moral permissiveness, no one may seek high office whose public record is  tainted with even just one known adultery, past or present. 

 

            Of course in Europe, some streetwalkers and transvestites have been raised to parliament, and some divorced politicians have landed in the highest places.  But  these are polyamorous and neo-pagan  socities whose norms are different from ours. Our experience with a president with multiple households has not been good for the country, the government or even the president himself.  We cannot have another such president, or even a vice-president of the same moral mold.   

 

            After character, comes competence.  The most morally upright individual will not do, if incompetent.  In fact, no morally upright individual will want to take on any position for  which he or she is not qualified. That would be rank  dishonesty, corruption and injustice. Not unlike putting a blind man on the bridge of a ship to steer it to safety through a storm in the high seas.  

 

We have had that very same experience at least a couple of times now. We cannot, we shouldn’t,  wish for more.  The cat that burns its butt on a hot stove learns never to lie down again on the same stove  even after it has gotten cold. We would be less than cats if we do not learn from past experience.   

             

Several years ago, somebody asked Dolphy, our greatest living comedian, to run for president.  His reply was quick: “Ayoko, baka manalo ako.” (“I don’t want, I might win.”)  Unfortunately we only have one Dolphy; the other celebrities are not nearly half  half as bright. It is now up to us to deal with them.

 

            At all levels, we are plagued with a diseased understanding of politics.   

 

1) Loren Legarda strangely announced her vice-presidential candidacy before she could find a presidential candidate.  This normally is not done.  After Manny Villar finally took her into the NP, the first thing her NPC partymates said was that they were supporting her but not Villar. They are simply not part of the deal.  The guy who picked up a hitch hiker on the road may or may not have a smooth drive from here on.     

 

2) Former Sen.  Ralph Recto, who had been  Arroyo’s  Socio-Economic Planning Secretary after his unsuccessful Senate run in 2007, resigned his Cabinet post without any known policy conflict with Malacanang.  Then he walked into the Liberal Party which welcomed him as a senatorial candidate. 

 

The issue here is honor, not party loyalty, which no longer exists. In any administration, a Cabinet member shares the responsibility for the success or failure of the policies of the administration. If the Arroyo administration has failed Recto was partly responsible for that failure.  Inside a casino no one could go to the cashier to claim any winnings after losing his game.  But that’s exactly what happened here. Recto seems luckier than everybody else, including the LP, whose loss is now Ralph’s gain.

 

This, however, is not an isolated case. Some administration senators are seeking reelection not as administration candidates but as  “guest candidates” of  parties in the opposition. Only in the Philippines.        

What did Hillary tell GMA and Noynoy?

Reports persist that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in Manila to simply ensure clean and credible elections instead of running for any elective post in  2010.  And that she gave Sen. Noynoy Aquino at his request a brief private audience.      

 

            Are these to be believed? 

 

            First, the Arroyo story.  For obvious reasons, neither Malacanang nor the U.S. Embassy will confirm this story. But perhaps certain things could help.  While Clinton was in town,  the Star ran my piece on  Mrs. Arroyo possibly running for vice-president.  It elicited a few telephone calls. Before the day was out the ruling Lakas-Kampi party announced Edu Manzano, a tv host of modest standing, as its vice presidential candidate.

 

Some observers noted that although not all politicians are superstitious, they generally avoid making important decisions on  the 13^th  day of the month, least of all on Friday the 13^th.  They are not likely to build a building with a 13^th floor or be photographed in a group of 13.  But the ruling party chose the date for Edu’s run as though it could no longer wait.

 

            In apparent appreciation, President Barack Obama put his arm (figuratively) around Mrs. Arroyo at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore. He sat with her at the US-ASEAN summit at the margins of the APEC meeting and asked her to draft a five-year plan for US-ASEAN engagement in trade, security, human rights and climate change.

 

            A heart attack may no longer be called for if at the end of the day, contrary to all previous speculations, Mrs. Arroyo and family finally decide to go on an extended ocean cruise around the world, end up in the Galapagos Islands or Rio, and not run for anything anymore. 

 

            What about Hillary’s  reported encounter with Noynoy? It is to Noynoy’s credit that if there was such a meeting, he has not made political capital of it by leaking it to the press.  But it should be good for all if he could reassure his present and potential supporters that he is not running as an American candidate. It is no longer fashionable or helpful to be called an American boy.

 

In 1953, the Filipino voters did not mind having a president who was openly managed by the CIA’s Col. Edward Lansdale.  Ramon Magsaysay was genuinely popular among the masses because of his anti-Huk campaign, and when he died in a plane crash in 1957, our people interred him in their pantheon of heroes. No Filipino scholar has since dared to reexamine his record, so year after year, several men and women are proud to receive  their Magsaysay awards. But times have changed. 

 

Even though the US  had figured prominently in deposing Marcos and installing Cory Aquino as president, she tried not to be seen openly as an American marionette. She marched to the Senate to try to persuade her own senators to approve a new treaty that would have given the US bases another ten years after 1991, but no one could persuade her to receive US Defense Secretary Richard Cheney even for a few minutes, for being the alter-ego of US President George Herbert Bush who had made the unfortunate mistake of praising Marcos earlier for his “adherence” to the democratic process. 

 

Those who have heard Noynoy say anything on any subject at all would probably wonder what he could have said to Clinton. A  one-way conversation seemed more likely, with the young senator lending his ears.  Clinton might have found him eager to support US global policies and programs, whether or not he becomes  president.

 

One program could be “reproductive health.”  Aware of the strong moral and constitutional opposition to the RH bill in Congress, Clinton had wisely steered away from the subject in her public statements here.  But she remains firmly committed to propagating reproductive health around the world. As she told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives “reproductive health” includes access to abortion, and the Obama administration is resolved to abolish all obstacles to such access around the world.

 

Noynoy is a proud supporter of the RH bill, even though, like so many others, he has shown very little or no understanding at all of the constitutional, ethical and anthropological issues involved.  He says women should be free to choose, completely unaware that they are already free to choose----no law prohibits them  from contracepting or getting sterilized. Then he says the State should provide contraceptives and sterilization services to everyone, completely unaware that  this is not constitutionally possible---the Constitution says the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. 

 

Like his friends in the RH lobby, the young senator obviously sees no contradiction in the State on one hand protecting the unborn from the moment of conception and the State on the other hand running a contraceptives and sterilization program whose purpose is to prevent women from conceiving. 

 

Face to face with the formidable Hillary Clinton, did Noynoy not reaffirm his support for the US RH policy and promise to pursue it should he ever become president?  Or did Clinton choose not to discuss it at all, given her guest’s limitations?   US National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200, however, commands the US President and Secretary of State never to let any opportunity pass without taking up the population issue---now codenamed reproductive health---when meeting with foreign leaders.

 

Hillary does not owe us a statement, but Noynoy Aquino clearly does. 

Chiz soufflé?

The press was quite exhuberant in saying that Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero “rearranged the political landscape” when he bolted the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) on the day he was to proclaim his presidential bid under that party, said a mouthful about political parties, and left his supporters clueless on his next move as a once-declared presidential aspirant for 2010.

Indeed, he would have done so had he declared himself an independent candidate after leaving his party. But he stopped halfway. As things stand, Chiz’s bold move altered the political landscape only to the extent that a crumbling cheese soufflé disfigures itself without affecting anybody else except the person who has to eat it.

Thanks largely to media’s apparent fascination with him, one news headline screamed, “Chiz junks NPC, Danding” instead of the other way around. Clearly it was the NPC and its founder Danding Cojuangco who had spurned Chiz when they rejected his bid, or decided not to field a presidential candidate at all.

Chiz ought to have foreseen the perils of campaigning for votes outside his party long before the party had formally decided to field him as its candidate. Of course, he was not alone in that egregious course; as a rule, our presidential and even vice-presidential wannabes nominate themselves instead of allowing themselves to be nominated by others. But unlike the others, Chiz did not own nor control his party.

Neither did he exert enough effort to make his party play by the rules. For instance, in 2007, it did not matter to him that while he, Loren Legarda, Sonny Osmeña and Nikki Coseteng were running as NPC candidates on the Genuine Opposition (GO) senatorial ticket, two other NPC members---Tessie Aquino Oreta and Tito Sotto---were running on the administration’s Team Unity (TU) slate.

A more sensitive partymember would have protested that arrangement, which threw away all party rules. He could have resigned from the party then, and it would have been a principled move. But none of those involved in that farce did or said anything about it. In a sense, Chiz’s party resignation was one election too late.

Chiz might have assumed that given his impressive and costly performance in that---his first----senatorial election (he got 18 million out of close to 40 million votes), sustained temporarily by some superficial surveys, he had become ripe for the highest office, and that his party would simply have to concede his point. But he had assumed wrongly, it turns out.

Topping one or several senatorial elections has never guaranteed winning the presidency or even being picked as a party’s official candidate. Look at Jovy Salonga. Before our voters started putting all sorts of jokers in the Senate, Salonga habitually topped the senatorial polls. But when he finally ran for president as “Mr. Incorruptible,” he ended behind Imelda Marcos, who merely took a tourist bus to shake a few hands here and there, without ever making a single serious campaign speech.

Look also at Sen. Mar Roxas. Since his first Senate run under President Arroyo in 2001, he had been preparing to become president. Even his recent marriage was said to have been originally intended to improve his chances. But everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and he is now running simply as Noynoy Aquino’s teammate.

Chiz might have believed that just because the youth of the country outnumber their elders, his youthfulness was enough to propel him to the highest office. Indeed, many seemed convinced that his ability to say everything every young person likes to hear on any given issue gave him a decisive edge over the others. But many find his record a bit too thin for the office.

The presidency demands some maturity and experience. Chiz has every right to mature under stress in order to become the most suitable material for president. Unhappily, his test came last week, and he found himself in what chess players call a zugzwang---an untenable situation where one has no choice but to make a bad move. He ended saying things no one with half his brains would have said to a political science class for pinheads.

“I am leaving my party because I believe that I can fulfill the role that I am bound to play in connection with the coming elections…not as a member of any party or a companion of any person, but as just me….” One’s political party should be the party of all Filipinos, and one’s party mates should be all Filipinos.

This is arrant nonsense. It is not the same as Manuel L. Quezon’s oft-quoted, “My party ends where my country begins.” In an electoral democracy, the party answers to the people for the kind of men and women it runs for public office. To insist that no party should be owned by any one individual and function like a basketball team is to insist on educating the politicians and the electorate alike. But to suggest that parties as a rule are a negative influence upon government and should be discarded is to replace centuries of political theory and praxis with a demagogue’s conceit. All of us are capable of making the most outlandish mistakes, but no one of Chiz Escudero’s promise deserves to make that mistake.

GMA for Vice-President? Don’t scoff at it

Because of the rash of defections plaguing the ruling party, the opposition may be tempted to dismiss President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as a spent force. That would be a big mistake. She is still very much in the game, and the opposition cannot take anything for granted.

The earlier spin was that Mrs. Arroyo would run for Congress, seek the Speakership if she wins, and push for a constitutional shift to parliamentary government and become its prime minister. Even under extremely favorable conditions, that looked like a very long shot.

But conditions are not favorable now, and the old assumptions may no longer hold. Between now and the May 10, 2010 elections, many congressmen would have changed their political affiliations and alignments; they could return to Congress with the same old habits, but a change in the presidency may not leave certain congressional practices unchanged.

Mrs. Arroyo could win a House seat in Pampanga hands down, but winning the Speakership could be something else. I would not worry about it too much; I would worry more about her running for Vice-President, despite Lakas-Kampi’s badly diminished ranks.

Although the idea was first floated rather petulantly by Rep. Danny Suarez of Quezon Province, it does not look like he did it on his own just to spice up the political gossip. It seems more likely that the idea had been incubating within the administration for some time, and Suarez was simply allowed to leak it. All previous talk about GMA running in Pampanga, fueled by her constant visits to Lubao, may have been intended solely to mislead some sociology professors and the press.

The apparent inspiration is the Putin model. This refers to Vladimir Putin who, at the end of his term as president of Russia, opted to become prime minister to his protégé, President Dmitry Medvedev, whom the Western media like to depict (unfairly in my view) as Putin’s shadow or stooge.

In Russia as in the Philippines, the real power is lodged in the president. But a former president who becomes prime minister, whether or not his name is Putin, and a former president who becomes vice-president, whatever his name, are likely to project more power and influence than they actually wield. In Singapore, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew continues to project such power and influence long after he had stepped down to become senior minister.

This alone should not make us lose sleep. But there would be nothing innocuous in GMA running for vice-president. Especially since it coincides with the shift to automated voting which has raised serious concerns about the real possibility of the system failing, resulting in the inability of the Commission on Elections to proclaim any winners.

By June 30, 2010, all incumbent national and local officials shall have ended their term, except for the 12 senators whose term began in 2007 and ends in 2013. If by then no president and other national officials shall have been elected and qualified, a power vacuum would have occurred. That could prompt Mrs. Arroyo to try and hold over, which is not provided in the Constitution. The military could decide to support her, as they have done so until now, or they could take over on their own, without her, as “the protector of the people and the State.”

But what happens if Mrs. Arroyo runs and is elected vice-president while the Comelec is unable to proclaim a new president-elect and other elected national officials? Under the Constitution, the Vice-President-elect becomes the acting President until the President shall have been elected and qualified. But the Constitution sets no deadline for the election and qualification of the President.

All this, of course, is purely hypothetical. It could happen, but I am not saying it would. Still the mere possibility of it occurring is enough to make some people climb walls. For despite GMA’s badly eroded trust rating, her ability to use the legal and extra-legal powers and resources of the presidency is unequalled and undisputed.

What then should the opposition do? The most intelligent thing for them to do would be to meet GMA head-on by fielding their most popular bets for vice-president. Assuming the reported surveys are real and correct, Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas could exchange places so that Noynoy, rather than Mar, should take on GMA, while Manny Villar could probably persuade former President Joseph (Erap) Estrada to sacrifice his own presidential bid and become his running mate instead.

This may sound absurd to the parties concerned, but it may be the only way of preventing a great calamity afflicting the land. It may also be the only way to help Noynoy Aquino rid himself of those strident, unenlightened and irreverent critics who have the temerity to proclaim that his being the modest son of Ninoy and Cory Aquino of happy memory and the even more modest brother of Kris Aquino of popular entertainment tv is not enough basis for him to want to become president of this benighted country. It may also be the only way to help Erap get out of a second presidential run that seems to lack all the promise of his first successful run and which he may not be psychologically prepared to lose.

How ABS-CBN Misled The Public On The Poll Count

Because of the unduly large role being played by the polling agencies in choosing national and even local candidates, I am rerunning this article that first appeared during the 2004 presidential elections to help the reader gain a sober and intelligent perspective on the credibility of these agencies. A related material on the SWS survey on reproductive health also appears on this blog.


FST Documentary Service
All inquiries to Sen. Kit Tatad, Tel. No. 9283627

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HOW ABS-CBN AND SWS MISLED THE PUBLIC ON THE POLL COUNT


On May 10, 2004, after the counting of votes at the precincts, ABS-CBN began broadcasting a Quick Count. There was no attempt on the part of government to stop it. That would occur much later, when the Commission on Elections and the Department of Justice stopped ABC-Channel 5 from conducting its own count, and ordered the Daily Tribune not to carry ads containing hitherto unpublished election results supplied by the Opposition.

As of 4 a.m. of May 11, 2004, the first 1.224 million votes counted were distributed as follows:

NCR --- 20.46 percent
Luzon ---39.60 percent
Visayas ---18.58 percent
Mindanao ---21.36 percent

These were shared as follows:

Candidate National NCR Luzon Visayas Mindanao

FPJ 480,207 100,486 212,098 62,518 114,105
GMA 466,294 70,182 157,527 143,470 95,107
LACSON 202,929 56,954 80,452 18,655 46,858
ROCO 93,100 22,245 45.045 13,570 12,239
VILLANUEVA 102,249 27,102 40.973 13,254 20,920

At this time of day, Mr. Mahar Mangahas appeared at ABS-CBN to deliver the first results of the ABS-CBN/SWS exit poll. Based on 528 NCR respondents, this poll reported the following findings, as of 2:30 a.m.

GMA -------------- 31 percent
FPJ --------------- 23 percent
LACSON—------- 20 percent
VILLANUEVA—10 percent
ROCO-------------- 8 percent
NO ANSWER----- 7 percent

Notice the big difference between the Quick Count’s figure and this one. Yet the votes of SWS’s 528 respondents tried to reverse the impact of the 276,969 NCR voters who had put FPJ ahead of GMA by at least 30,304 votes. In the SWS survey, FPJ was now 8 percent behind.

Mangahas did not find his NCR poll conclusive. In a text message to Ms. Susan Tagle, FPJ’s communications aide, received at 3:30 a.m. of May 11, 2004, Mangahas said:

“Frm Mahar: Sori 2 disappoint. She has lead, but inconclusiv sins many kept silent. Ds is ncr only. On d way to abs now. “

Despite such inconclusiveness, he submitted the results anyway.

Given the wide discrepancy between its own Quick Count and the SWS survey, ABS-CBN management did not quite know how to proceed. They could not possibly present to the public two sets of conflicting data and still claim any credibility. According to inside informants, Mr. Dong Puno could not decide, so they woke up Mr. Gaby Lopez at 5:30 a.m. But Mr. Lopez himself could see no way out either.

Someone then proposed that the Quick Count be made to support the thrust of the SWS survey, which would eventually show GMA leading FPJ nationwide. They proposed to revise the geographic distribution of the vote count, by increasing the percentage for the Visayas (where GMA was leading FPJ) and bringing down the percentage for NCR, Luzon and Mindanao (where she was trailing FPJ).

The proposed new distribution was as follows:

NCR --- 18.38 percent
LUZON --- 35.84 percent
VISAYAS --- 26.05 percent
MINDANAO— 19.73 percent

This proposal was accepted, and Mr. Lopez immediately left for the United States.

At 7:18 a.m. same day, the Quick Count showed the following results:

Candidate National NCR Luzon Visayas Mindanao

GMA 587,027 76,893 168,555 237,616 103,963
FPJ 562,976 105,646 229,033 102,709 125,588
LACSON 231,195 60,273 88,685 29,525 52,712
ROCO 109,902 24,270 47,925 24,150 13,557
VILLANUEVA 122,881 29,618 44,211 26,406 22,646

Just by readjusting the geographic distribution of the count, GMA was able to wipe out her deficit of 22,903 votes at the 4 a.m. report, and post a lead of 24,051 votes at the 7:18 a.m. count. This tends to show that GMA had posted an additional 46,954 votes while FPJ posted zero. In reality, neither the votes nor the margins in NCR, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao changed; only the percentage distribution of the votes did. Perception of reality changed, but not reality itself.

As of 7:18 a.m. of May 11, the Quick Count had counted a total 1,613,981 actual votes for all the presidential candidates. In this count, FPJ led GMA in NCR, Luzon, and Mindanao. The only place where GMA led FPJ was the Visayas whose percentage share of the count had been changed, from 18.58 to 26.05 percent.

At 1:00 p.m. of the same day, however, the SWS exit poll, using a base of 4,627 respondents, reported the following results:

Candidate National NCR N/Cen. Luzon So. Luzon Visayas Mindanao

GMA 41% 31% 32% 24% 62% 50%
FPJ 32 23 41 38 21 35
LACSON 9 20 9 11 4 5
ROCO 5 8 2 11 3 2
VILLANUEVA 5 10 5 6 2 4
NO ANSWER 8 7 11 9 7 4

Notice that GMA now leads FJP everywhere, except Luzon.

This trend has since migrated to the Namfrel count.

Namfrel has clearly adopted the same formula used by ABS-CBN and SWS. Simply by concentrating its Quick Count on areas where GMA has more votes than FPJ, while delaying the count in bigger areas where FPJ is leading GMA by wide margins, it is able to show GMA leading FPJ across the nation.

Thus, as of 4 p.m., May 17, Namfrel already counted 1.68 million or 51.13 percent of the 3.29 million votes of Region VII, while counting only 1.19 million of Metro Manila’s 6.9 million votes, and an average of 22.12 percent for the other regions..

In Central Luzon, where FPJ’s advantage was never disputed, except in Mrs. Arroyo’s home province of Pampanga, the same Namfrel report showed Mrs. Arroyo leading FPJ, 693,461 to 252,794. The only possible explanation was that the votes were taken mostly, if not entirely, from Pampanga.

This manipulation of public perceptions need not automatically affect the integrity of the entire data, if there were no attempt to change the same. But it is precisely part of the operation to alter the data. Once the trend is accepted, even the most militant would tend to drop their guard, and accept anything that follows, even if it was the result of invention or fraud.

The twin motu proprio orders of the Department of Justice and the Commission on Elections stopping the independent broadcast by ABC-Channel 5 of the results of elections, and the refusal by the pro-Arroyo newspapers to carry paid advertisements by the KNP containing hitherto unreported results of the elections, followed now by the Comelec order to the Daily Tribune not to carry the same ads – all these must be seen in this light. They are an integral part of the effort to steal the elections.

In the past, such attack on press freedom and the right of the people to be informed on matters of public concern would have ignited a rebellion in the ranks of the press. Not now. The mainstream media, both print and broadcast, have chosen to look the other way, while two of their own must fight for their freedoms. This shows the depth of the sinful collaboration between so many media owners and the administration. This has become the gravest danger to the democratic system.


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