Is he up for the job?

"The job of House Speaker is a rigorous one."

A newcomer with connections or a veteran with enough expertise.

On the race to Speakership, it is not wrong for aspirants to be confident about themselves. What is not acceptable is an aspirant who wants the Speakership with not even a little qualification except for being an ally of the First Family. 

Former Press Secretary Rigoberto Tiglao has a point when he criticized the 41-year-old Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco who is seeking the post.

Besides the fact that Velasco is not well-known, he is only a two-term congressman who was even defeated by rival Regina Reyes with a 4,000-vote advantage. 

Velasco only got the seat because Reyes was disqualified on the issue of citizenship. Reyes appealed the case to the Supreme Court, the high court ruled that Comelec no longer had jurisdiction over the case since Velasco was already declared the winner and the proper venue would be the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal. 

This is not to undermine Velasco’s capability. But is he really up for the rigorous job of a House Speaker?

To quote Tiglao’s statement, “why on earth this 41-year-old congressman who had troubled route to his congressional seat, have the gall to think he can be Speaker, in the league of such political titans as the late Ramon Mitra, Jose de Venecia, Manuel Villar and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo?” 

To our congressmen, is being a Speaker now something to be looked down on? Can anyone just be a Speaker? Can Velasco, who has yet to prove something in terms of politics, leadership and mastery on chamber rules, be a leader of 300 lawmakers? 

While Velasco played a major role in the campaign of the senatorial aspirants under the Hugpong ng Pagbabago, he has yet to be seen or heard immersing in or involving himself with important issues in the country concerning the country. 

When a shakedown happened in the leadership of former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, who was removed in his position and replaced by Mrs. Arroyo, Velasco’s name surfaced as the one who will replace former House Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas. It never materialized as his colleagues were reportedly wary of his relative inexperience as a House leader.

Our challenge to Congressman Velasco is to prove his mettle first. It is not enough that he is an ally of President Rodrigo Duterte and a friend of presidential daughter Sara Duterte. This is not enough credential to claim leadership of the House.

If he could prove he really is qualified for the job, then by no means, he can go for it. But only if he is really up for it.

* * *

It’s been almost a month since the elections but an honest-to-goodness assessment of how polling firms fared in their elections surveys and projections has yet to be done.

I believe this is necessary. An assessment will solidify the credibility of these polling firms or send them crumbling, depending on how they projected the election results. It will also help determine if these election surveys are really needed for future election purposes.

While many voters look upon the mainstream pollsters—Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations—as the most accurate polling firms out there, I can’t help but raise doubts on how they handled Senator-elect Francis Tolentino’s case.

More than a month heading into the elections, Tolentino was safely tucked in ninth to 10th place as per their survey results. However, with no major development, Tolentino drastically slipped into 15th to 17th place in both survey firms’ results. And to think the influential Iglesia ni Cristo had included Tolentino in the list of senatorial candidates it was to endorse for the May 13 polls. Other major religious groups did the same.

The result? Tolentino did really bag the ninth place. Something which independent pollster, The Center headed by Ed Malay, accurately projected right from the start.

“We’re still going over the 2019 results especially to help us in political mapping and we just realized that the final results are well within our predictive percentages in our last and final survey,” Malay said.

“But in the case of Tolentino, we have been saying from the start that he will end up with 33 to 35 percent for the ninth position and the final Comelec tally for him was 33 percent which is well within our Pulso margin of error of 2.5 percent. In fact, there was one Pulso survey that he was in eighth place which he could’ve also shared with Imee since only 300K votes separated them,” Malay avers.

“As I have repeatedly said, the accuracy of the surveys shouldn’t depend only on the data being extracted but also the employment of what we call ‘listening posts’ that provide The Center with a near-to-exact barometer of the political movements on the ground that are not reflected on the survey responses,” he added.

Congratulations again. It only means that the Pulso ng Pilipino of The Center was all along right on the bat and yet people are so enamored by SWS and Pulse Asia. 

It’s about time we started paying attention to independent pollsters.