MOST Filipinos approve of the way the administration is handling the fight against criminality, but they find the government lacking in addressing an issue that 34 percent of them find urgent—controlling inflation, the latest Pulse Asia survey showed.
The survey, conducted among 1,200 respondents from Dec. 6 to 11, 2016, showed that 84 percent of Filipinos approved of the administration’s anti-crime efforts, while 12 percent said they were ambivalent about it. Only 4 percent disapproved.
President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-crime efforts have focused on his war on illegal drugs, which has drawn widespread criticism abroad because of the rising bodycount of drug suspects.
The administration also drew high marks for responding to disasters (80 percent), fighting corruption (76 percent), protecting the welfare of overseas workers (75 percent), increasing peace (72 percent), protecting the environment (69 percent), enforcing the rule of law (69 percent), defending territorial integrity (65 percent), creating more jobs (58 percent), improving workers’ pay (57 percent), and poverty reduction (51 percent).
On the other hand, only 44 percent of respondents approved of the way the government was fighting inflation. Most—or 36 percent—were undecided, while 20 percent expressed disapproval.
The approval ratings showed little change from the September survey, Pulse Asia said, except for a decline in efforts to increase workers’ pay and to control inflation.
The latest survey, conducted from Dec. 6 to 11, 2016 had a ±3 percent margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level.
The Philippine National Police said Friday that the anti-illegal drugs campaign has seized over P3.7 billion worth of prohibited substances in six months, from July 2016 to January 2017.
PNP statistics showed that some 95,000 sachets of shabu were seized in various parts of the country, 8,5881 of them from Metro Manila.
Reports said some 6,273 people were killed in the war on drugs since July 2016 with 2,224 pushers or users killed in police operations. The remaining 4,049 were victims of extrajudicial killings or vigilante groups.
Amid the government’s bloody war on drugs, Vice President Leni Robredo called on the young from four Catholic schools never to resort to violence in “fighting the fight.”
Speaking before the Edsa-Ortigas Consortium’s Peace Congress, Robredo said a culture of violence will never solve problems.
“Violence is the quick fix that we must prevent and condemn. Violence is a way of cutting corners, where complex problems are met with simplistic but ineffective solutions. Here in the Philippines, we are faced with issues of terrific scale and complexity. But violence is not the right response to poverty and inequality,” she said. “Bloodshed will not solve crime and injustice.”
The consortium is composed of leaders from both grade school and high school departments of the Immaculate Conception Academy, Xavier School, La Salle Greenhills and St. Pedro Poveda College. With Francisco Tuyay and Rio N. Araja