President Rodrigo Duterte’s “authoritarian tendencies” have been drawing increased “dissatisfaction” and it is showing in his ratings, a public policy center said Friday.
“His ratings are still high, but at the same time we can see the fall,” Temario Rivera, chairman of the group Center for People Empowerment, told reporters.
“I think this could be the beginning of an increasing challenge and dissatisfaction with the way the government has been run because the strongman authoritarian tendencies had been stronger and now seen.”
Rivera also said the President’s allies’ call for a no-election could backfire as the Filipinos had high expectations that the elections would be taking place.
“We know Filipinos. They have a high expectation for the election to happen,” Rivera said.
Malacañang says it opposes the cancellation of the May 2019 elections, but it will not stop its allies from pursuing it.
“If its people’s initiative, perhaps that is also the answer of the House leadership to the position of the President that he would not have any hand in it,” Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said.
“If that’s people’s initiative, what can you do if it came from the people, right?’’ Rivera disagreed.
“It's not a people's initiative. How can it be a people's initiative? There is no demand from below as shown by all the public opinion surveys,’’ Rivera said.
House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez first raised the possibility of resorting to a people’s initiative to cancel the elections so that lawmakers would have enough time to work on establishing a federal type of government.