Mababaw ang kaligayahan

Only someone who is deaf, dumb, and blind will believe that the problem of government corruption has been solved.

M

ababaw ang kaligayahan loosely means easy to please. The recent Pulse Asia performance and trust ratings of President Rodrigo Duterte, which remain impressively high, are an example of this. But rather than cast doubt on the intelligence of the survey respondents or the integrity of the public opinion polls (which poor losers usually do when ratings are not to their liking), I think credit should be given to Duterte for his uncanny ability to titillate and please his constituents.

In this regard, Duterte is certainly superior to US President Donald Trump who has had to constantly pat himself on the back to satisfy his starvation for praise. Trump’s latest self-praise was his description of himself as a political genius. Said one sarcastic CNN commentator: “Trump has to call himself a genius, since nobody else will.”

But to go back to Duterte’s high performance and trust ratings, it certainly would have given us a better appreciation of the value of the Pulse Asia survey if the questionnaire used had also been published along with the results. That would have given us an idea of how in- depth the study was and how incisive have been the conclusions.

At any rate, let’s assume that Pulse Asia did try to get a betterthan- superficial reading of the perceptions and attitudes of the Filipino populace.

The results also do say something about our people’s remarkable ability to make do with what they are served, to see the positive in it, and, in the words of a wise man, “to make lemonade when life gives them lemons.”

Of course, this doesn’t say much about our people’s NACH or “need for achievement,” a term that human resource specialists use to describe a person’s aspirations and upward strivings.

At any rate, if one were to appraise Duterte’s first year in office, based on the survey ratings, one would be inclined to say that