THREE election watchdogs on Monday warned voters against relying solely on survey results in choosing their candidates for next year’s national and local elections.
The Legal Network for Truthful Elections or Lente, the National Movement for Free Elections or Namfrel, and the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting advised the public not to use the election surveys as a basis for deciding who to vote for.
They said the opinion surveys and their results were being influenced by the clients of the polling firms, and those included candidates and political parties.
“The surveys are being paid for. They cost millions of pesos and someone is paying for them,” Lente executive director Rona Ona Caritos said.
“Despite their claim that they are independent, the survey firms have clients who pay millions for those surveys, and those clients influence the surveys.” PPCRV representative Tony Villasor said the survey firms should be transparent with their survey results.
“We have to be wary where the questions are coming from,” Villasor said.
“Our concern is more on transparency as well as the campaign finance that is coming out from the propaganda blitz.”
Said Namfrel’s secretary-general Eric Alvia: “The surveys are only snapshots at a given point in time. They are not a gauge of what the voters will decide on election day. It is not a fair gauge of the voters’ behavior as to how the elections will turn out.”
Instead of relying on the survey results, former Commission on Elections commissioner Gus Lagman of the TransparentElections.org said, the voters must consider a candidate’s integrity and competence and ask if he or she would become a good leader.
Earlier, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines urged the Catholic voters to be “free from trends and herds” but instead “do what is right and to choose who is right.”
