ROQUE: DUTERTE ISN’T A LEADER WHO IS SURVEY-DRIVEN
President Duterte does not give a hoot about his satisfaction ratings going down, and his spokesperson, Harry Roque, said he was one leader who was not “survey-driven.”
Mr. Duterte’s net satisfaction (satisfied vs dissatisfied), which is used by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) as a rating of the President’s performance, was down 11 points from the first quarter to +45 in the survey of 1,200 Filipinos in the last week of June.
The President was unfazed by the drop, which was lower than his +58 net satisfaction in December.
“I do not care. Make it (a) 15 (-point drop) … It does not interest me at all,” Mr. Duterte said on Tuesday night hours after SWS released results of its second quarter survey.
Mr. Duterte added that he was just “coast(ing) along.”
“Since I am not popular anymore, Congress might decide to get a popular one. You want a popular President? Fine, good,” he told reporters at Clark in Pampanga province.
In radio interviews on Wednesday, Roque said Mr. Duterte was not leading the country for the sake of getting good ratings.
“He is doing his promise and his promise is simple: anticorruption, antidrugs and comfortable life for all,” Roque said.
‘Historically highest’
In an interview with dzXL radio, Roque said Mr. Duterte had “historically” the highest satisfaction rating among all presi- dents, including Corazon Aquino, in their second year in office.
SWS survey results indicated that was true for only two former Presidents—Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Joseph Estrada.
His immediate predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, garnered about the same rating as Mr. Duterte, getting +42 in May 2012. If the survey’s margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points were factored in, Aquino would have gotten +45 or +39.
Aquino got a net rating of +67 in August 2012, shortly after he began his third year in office. He averaged a +45 net satisfaction rating during his six-year term.
Arroyo’s net satisfaction rating was -14 in March 2003 and +14 in June 2003 while Estrada’s was +5 in March 2000 and +13 in July 2000. There were no SWS performance surveys in June of 2000.
Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos scored better than Mr. Duterte two years into their terms. The elder Aquino recorded a net rating of +64 in February 1988 and +57 August 1988 while Ramos scored +67 in April 1994 and +55 in August 1994. There were no surveys in June of those years.
Roque said Mr. Duterte’s ratings were “not bad actually,” citing the 65 percent who were polled saying they were satisfied with the President.
He also said that Malacañang had a different survey that would show different results in the President’s satisfaction rating. He did not say when the Palace would release the results.