For many Duterte supporters, the Social Weather Stations fourth-quarter survey conducted last December may seem to be like a gift that goes on giving.
In my last piece, I reported that 31 percent of the respondents said they had “escaped poverty” within the last four to five years. This was measurably higher than the 26.6 percent reported the previous quarter, in September.
This time around, I had to blink at the latest, confoundingly positive poll results:
The number of “job optimists,” or those expecting more jobs in the next 12 months, outnumbered the number of “job pessimists”—those expecting fewer jobs—by +41. This “net optimism” rating exceeded the previous high of +37 recorded in December 2016, and is actually the highest ever registered since SWS began tracking it way back in 1998.
In addition, average adult unemployment also dropped, from 18.9 percent in September to 15.7 percent in December. This is the lowest unemployment recorded by SWS since March 2004.
[Note that SWS unemployment differs from the official definition in several important respects. We happen to agree with the SWS definition, but what’s important is that the same definition be used from one survey to the next, and that any changes be disclosed to the public.]
So it seems that job optimism is being driven, not by any halo effect from Duterte’s enormous popularity, but from actual, real improvements in the employment situation.
Since it’s jobs—even more than prices—that most worry the poor, this has got to be good news for the President. With tax reform putting more money in people’s pockets as well as funding massive job-creating infrastructure projects, people will be expecting him to top this act, again and again, in the coming months.
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Over on the diplomatic front, the grand poohbahs of the European Union ended up blinking—not just once, but three times—in their continuing attempts to stare down our supremely insouciant President.
Blink one: The new EU Ambassador Franz Jessen had to confirm that the Philippines was rejecting P2.6 billion of European aid directed towards sustainable projects as well as rehabilitation in Mindanao. The newcomer to Manila admitted he was “still struggling a bit to understand how the EU is interfering in” the independence of our foreign policy.
Blink two: As we intimated also in our last piece, the European Commission decided to retain preferential GSP+ status for most of our exports to that continent, despite their reservations over alleged EJK’s. This decision still has to be ratified by the European parliament, though, and if the new ambassador can help out with this, it will certainly endear him a lot to us natives.
Blink three: Duterte will be invited to attend the next Asia-Europe Meeting in Brussels this October, which will bring together 51 heads of state together with European and Asean leaderships. Jessen hopes this will “develop the President’s understanding of Europe”. That’s OK by us, since it looks like the Europeans are now finally beginning to understand our President.
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Unfortunately, the blinking game doesn’t always go to the good guys. After receiving a lot of flak, Assistant Secretary “Mocha” Uson—Duterte’s number one blogger—decided to return a government service award given to her by the alumni association of her alma mater, UST.
The feisty young lady accused her critics of bullying, judgmental and sanctimonious behavior. The dust-up unfortunately also claimed the alumni association president, Henry Tenedero, who had to resign his position—after heaving, we’ll bet, a very long sigh of relief.
There seem to be three distinct but often overlapping groups of hyenas who ended up braying for Uson’s blood.
The first were the incorrigible ideological and political critics of Duterte, like Akbayan Rep. Tom Villarin who earlier returned his own reward. Uson was just too tempting a cut-out target for them. If God Himself were to descend from heaven and anoint Duterte as His chosen (albeit very blunt) instrument to reform the country, the Akbayan types would be rallying against Him too, even if they don’t believe He exists anyway.
The second were the press freedom mavens, who’ve been raising a fuss over Uson as the leading purveyor of “fake news” on social media—even if Uson herself keeps saying she’s not a member of media and that her blog, by its nature, contains only opinion, not news.
These mavens are chasing their own tails: The number of readers who may believe in someone’s opinion doesn’t operate to qualify that opinion as “news”, whether genuine or fake. Come to think of it, where were these mavens during the glory years of the PNoy administration, when the country’s biggest morning paper and biggest broadcast network were leaders of what former Press Secretary Tatad charmingly calls the conscript media?
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The third and, to my mind, most odious group were the moralizers, those who objected on lifestyle grounds to Uson, an exotic dancer who, I’m told, still practices her occupation.
In a country whose Catholicism is distinguished as much for its nominality as for its numbers, we can’t help but maintain a working distance between public sins (those against the law) and private sins (those against God). It’s not ideal, of course, but in a country whose leaders like to flaunt their philandering ways, we might otherwise never get anything done.
In the end, only one Person has the right either to highlight or to erase the debits and credits on the ledgers of our personal morality, because it is only He who’s authorized to make the entries in the first place.
That’s something you don’t have to be from UST to understand.
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