This comes as no surprise at all.
An overwhelming majority of Filipinos approve of and trust President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., based on the latest survey of the OCTA Research released last week, shows that his triumph in the May 9 general elections was no fluke.
OCTA’s Tugon ng Masa poll showed the chief executive registering an 86 percent trust rating and a 78 percent performance rating.
According to the survey, only 4 percent expressed distrust in the president, while 5 percent were not satisfied with his performance.
His trust rating ranged from 82 percent to 92 percent in the regions, with his highest trust rating in Mindanao at 92 percent, while he registered an 82 percent trust rating in the National Capital Region.
The Chief Executive’s trust ratings ranged from 78 percent to 90 percent among the social classes.
He obtained the highest boost from adult Filipinos belonging to Class E, or the “poorest of the poor,” registering 90 percent.
The chief executive’s performance ratings ranged from 74 percent to 85 percent, with the highest performance rating registered in Mindanao at 85 percent.
What the survey results tell us four months into the president’s term is that he has successfully navigated his first 100 days in office that political observers monitor as indicative of future performance.
The latest OCTA survey results also validate what it earlier reported, that 85 percent of Filipino adults strongly agree that the country under the Marcos administration is headed in the right direction, with only 6 percent expressing disagreement.
President Marcos described the OCTA survey results as “very encouraging,” saying it is important for government policies and programs to be felt by Filipinos across all socioeconomic classes.
Indeed, the new administration has ample reason to be elated by the survey results. But we also need to emphasize that this is no time for complacency, given the enormous challenges it faces in the years ahead.
The biggest challenge at this point is to accelerate economic recovery even as the nation still has to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are glad that the administration’s economic team has been doing their job and managed to steer the economy back on track, with a 7.6 percent GDP growth in the third quarter.
This is better than what was achieved in the same period last year, and gives much hope that the year-end economic performance will reflect a sustained positive outcome in 2023.
