Trump would win — in Taiwan

"Can he still bounce back?"

In a recent survey of people in eight Asia-Pacific countries and regions, only Taiwanese respondents expressed a preference for Donald Trump to be re-elected to a second term come the third of November.

In a poll published recently by the UK-based market research firm YouGov, 42 percent of Taiwanese favor Trump as against 30 percent for Democrat Joe Biden. Twenty-eight percent gave no opinion.

In Malaysia, it is 62 percent for Biden, and only 9 percent for Trump. In neighboring Singapore, the results are: Biden – 66 percent versus Trump’s 12 percent. Indonesia votes 63 percent versus 12 percent for Biden over the Donald.

Thailand is a bit kinder to Trump: 59 percent for Biden versus Trump’s 14 percent. Australia likewise, with 60 percent of those polled going for Biden, and 21 percent for Trump.

Hong Kong gave Trump a high level of support, aside from Taiwan, with 36 percent for him, but still votes for Joe Biden at 42 percent.

And the Philippines? Biden still leads Trump at 47 percent but a higher 24 percent gave thumbs up for the incumbent POTUS. Why are Filipinos relatively “kinder” to the Donald compared to say, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and even Thailand?

Trump should probably thank President Duterte for being nice to him, and expressing his kind thoughts on the Donald publicly at that. The other leaders have not ever publicly said a kind word for the incumbent president of the US of A.

And why are Taiwanese in favor of Trump? Mostly because he has been tougher against China than his predecessor Obama. But whether the Donald is truly pro-Taiwan or just using the nation as a “trump” card to get trade and other concessions from the mainland, or gain “pogi” points from China-haters in the US, nobody really knows.

In any case, it is just 13 days before Americans go to the polls, and right now, depending on which survey you read, Biden leads by anywhere from eight to eleven points. But the crucial battle is in the electoral college, and the states where the margins are closer — Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Georgia, and North Carolina. The other so-called battleground states, two weeks before E-Day, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona are trending towards the Democratic candidate.

Still, Biden’s campaign manager warns against complacency, because in 2016, the Democrats also thought Hillary would make it in some of the battleground states, enough to get the 270 electoral college votes, but Trump pulled a surprise.

Can Trump still bounce back? Vamos a ver.

Yesterday, he said he would leave the US of A if he loses to Biden, whom he slanderously described as a “criminal,” as his campaign rhetoric hit disgustingly new lows in American campaign history.

Like I wrote last week, Slovenia, where Melania Trump is from, is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe. When he loses, assuming he keeps his word (which he likely won’t), Lake Bled is a good retirement area. He can try buying the castle in the middle of the lake.

But then again, I am not American, and if it were not for the fact that the country still matters to regional and international security, why should I really care who leads them?

**

Baguio City is opening up to more tourists, not only from Region 1, but to all of Luzon. Mayor Benjie Magalong will of course institute the necessary safeguards to keep the summer capital safe from further COVID contagion.

The newspapers once again used the lion’s head in Kennon Road to symbolize the highland city. I have always recoiled at that symbol, and it’s not because I am a Rotarian and not a Lion, but because nowhere in the Cordillera or the country for that matter are there lions.

Maybe the good residents of Baguio can think of some other landmark. Just my personal take.

——–

The new Speaker of the House moved quickly to pass the budget on third reading, along with a declaration that there is no “pork” in the budget.

“We make sure that this is a constitutional budget based on the decision of the Supreme Court,” Speaker Lord Allan Velasco said, declaring further that “we are all lawyers here and we are making sure that there is no pork in the said budget.”

The qualifying phrase in the speaker’s statement is “based on the decision of the Supreme Court.” And the interpretation is further qualified by the claim that “we are all lawyers.”

That ruling specifically declared as unconstitutional the previous practice where lawmakers “intervene, assume or participate in any of the various post-enactment stages of the budget execution, such as but not limited to the areas of project identification, modification and revision of project identification, fund release and/or fund realignment unrelated to the power of congressional oversight.”

But what if there was collusion between the agencies, and the insertions were made by the agencies and the DBM in the submitted “president’s budget,” after several “consultations” with legislators?

In fairness to the new speaker, the “consultations” may have been done by his immediate predecessor or his allies, and since there is realistically little time to prune, and the same would be politically incorrect for a new leader trying to consolidate his mandate, the people who abjure the pork barrel will just have to pin their hopes on the scissors of the Senate and the bicameral conference committee.