The constantly changing political scene
THE Philippine political scene continues to be a swirling succession of events, now favorable to one group, then shifting to favor another. Between now and the filing of candidacies on October12-16, 2015, are seven weeks of uncertainty, followed by seven months of further uncertainty until the election on May 10, 2016.
For weeks now, the majority Liberal Party has been wooing Sen. Grace Poe to be the running mate of Secretary Mar Roxas. There was even talk that she could be the presidential candidate herself, after surveys showed she had passed Vice President Jejomar Binay in the rankings.
Then the other day, a new survey came out, which said Binay was back in the lead, followed by Secretary Roxas, then by Senator Poe, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, and Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. We can expect the propagandists of each group to come out with varying reactions to this survey. The Poe group will question its validity. The Binay group will hail it as “proof ” that he is still tops. The Roxas group will welome it, for it shows Roxas rising above his old third or fourth spot. The survey was reportedly commissioned by a business group for Malacañang
Surveys in the Philippines do not yet enjoy the same level of acceptance as in the United States. Even in that country, surveys have been wrong, the most glaring error being the prediction that Republican candidate Thomas Dewey would win over the Democrats’ Harry S. Truman in 1948. More recently in the United Kingdom, polls had predicted a close fight in the parliamentary elections last May, which the Conservatives of Prime Minister David Cameron actually won handily. In the Philippines, no survey had predicted that Binay would win over Roxas for vice president in 2010.
The fact is that opinion surveying is such a complicated procedure that a miscalculation in any step of the survey – from the sampling, to the wording of the questions, to the very appearance of the interviewer – could affect the results. There is also the possibility of a concocted survey findings being deliberately misused as a propaganda tool.
The problem is that many people in this country tend to accept opinion survey findings as the gospel truth. And many people tend to go with the flow of the crowd. They have their own views, of course, of what qualities they seek in a candidate, but in the end, nobody wants to admit he or she voted for a loser.
So what do we make of this latest survey showing a realignment of candidates’ positions? It could be just another propaganda move, among many others now vying for attention. Or it could show that people have not really made up their minds and are still changing in their perceptions of the candidates.
The best reaction is still to keep an open mind, to stay true to our ideals in our search for the next president and vice president of the country. There are still many months to go before the election and many more exposes and many more developments on the national scene, each of which will affect the fortunes of the various candidates. Let us just welcome all of these developments as part of our dynamic democracy.