Pinoys favor ‘Revolutionary Government’- Survey

SIXTY PERCENT of Filipinos would support President Rodrigo Duterte if he decided to declare a revolutionary government to carry out his reform agenda, according to a latest nation-wide opinion poll conducted by Surveyngbayan.

Considering that the question of declaring a revolutionary government has been publicly debated for some time, the pollster, presented this question once again squarely to the people nationwide:

If Duterte is forced to declare a revolutionary government to fulfill his promises, would you support him?

The question set in Tagalog (Kung mapilitang itatag ni DU30 ang Revolution Gov. para matupad ang mga pangako

nya payag kba?) for the clear understanding of people at all levels was transmitted via SMS to 300,000 subscribers of Philippine-based mobile phones.

The poll targets were selected randomly from the pollster's databank of 182.5 million Philippine-based mobile phone numbers. The question sought Yes or No answer with the age, gender and the location of the respondent.

A total of 3,255 raw responses came by the end of the one-week period from October 1-7 and the clean response set after deduping and purging for nonsense replies came to 1,841. Among them, 1,117 said “Yes”, and 652 said “No”.

The survey has a 99 percent level of confidence and a 3 percent margin of error.

Surveyngbayan had posed this question to the people nationwide previously just before Duterte took office as president on June 30, 2016, then in August 2016, after he was in office barely two months, and again in November 2017 when the public clamor for a revolutionary government was at its height.

In June 2016, the support for a revolutionary government was only 43 percent, but after the general public watching their new president for some two months, and also the activities of his opponents, the support of a Duterte-led revolutionary government climbed to 67 percent. Over a year later, in November 2017, amid a persistent clamor for a revolutionary government, 71 percent of the people tuned in favor of it.

Developments since then—particularly the president stating publicly that he did not encourage such a move, and the public attention shifting towards the mid-term election due next year—the mass support for a revolutionary government has somewhat waned, but still holding at a significant 60 percent.

Several reasons can be attributed to this continuing popular support for a Duterte-led revolutionary government. Among them:

• The Glenn Chong revelations of problems in the electoral system. Certain quarters have claimed that flaws in the electoral system provide the environment for declaring a revolutionary government which can tackle this problem and install an impartial election commission.

• The elite resistance to restructuring the government into a federal system.

• The need to reform the judiciary to make it impossible for the monied class to manipulate the courts for its advantage, and make the judiciary function fairly for the benefit of all and deliver justice fast.

Surveyngbayan is composed of Filipino social researchers based in the Philippines and the United States, as well as other research and information service professionals.

It employs a unique method of researching to measure the true pulse of public opinion. Relying on its databank of 182.5 million Philippine-based mobile phone numbers that can give access to every nook and cranny of the archipelago, and it randomly picks a survey set and sends its question(s) to all of them by SMS blasting. Thus, the pollster gives, in effect, virtually every mobile user in the country an equal chance to participate in its surveys.