Perplexed is how media reported Albay Congressman Edcel Lagman’s reaction to President Duterte’s continued popularity after two years in office.
In the latest Social Weather Stations survey taken from March 23 to 27, Mr. Duterte’s net satisfaction rating stood at +56, just a 2-percentage point drop from his +58 rating last December. Both ratings, as the SWS noted, are considered very good. Better still to the anti-Duterte group’s chagrin, it remains the highest among the top officials of the land.
“It is a puzzle,” Kuya Edcel reportedly said, “that despite the failure of President Duterte to deliver most of his campaign promises, his irreverence to established institutions including the Catholic Church, his unpatriotic surrender to China’s expansionism in the West Philippine Sea, his policy equivocation and his anti-human rights record, he still enjoys high popularity rating across classes in his second year in office.”
Well, given the anti-Duterte group’s continuing frustration and, yes, fascination with surveys, it may indeed be time for Lagman and his Magnificent 8 colleagues at the House of Representatives to recalibrate their thinking and metrics, if not their rhetoric and grasp of the situation on the ground.
For how can one so accustomed to public adulation like Lagman and his anti-Duterte colleagues, whose every utterance or antic gets to be front-page material in major dailies, be so wrong with their assessment? How can they be so wrong when almost every international organization and persons with global networks and resources have lauded every diatribe they have hurled against this man and his administration? How can they be so far out of step with the people, as it were, when this lowly local executive has been condemned and is about to be tried even in absentia by the denizens of some of the highest organs of international bodies such as the UN Human Rights Commission and the International Criminal Court for his brutal campaign against drugs?
Perhaps Lagman and company are really missing something. They are terribly miscalculating the sentiments of the folks out there without realizing so. Perhaps they are so consumed with their antipathy towards President Duterte they have substituted their feelings with that of the people. Perhaps they are listening to themselves instead of hearing the voices of the people who continue to seem to have gotten used to Duterte’s ways that they have factored the same in determining whether they are better off now with him in Malacañang than before. Perhaps they are more hopeful of the future despite the Chief Executive’s failings.
Perhaps, the brutal ‘war on drugs’, one of the key promises of then candidate Duterte, has produced some results albeit at the cost of lives. Maybe they remain hopeful that the other promised changes will still come to pass. In a word, a solid majority of Filipinos believe that President Duterte will not let them down.
Well, the facts and figures do not lie. As Lagman himself admitted, President Duterte’s approval ratings have been consistently high in all income classes and regions in the country. On the drug war, for example, the latest survey show that despite the strident anti- voices, a majority of Filipinos have found it a positive step forward. On this matter, a clear majority want the aggressive, in-your-face efforts of the administration to continue no matter the number of deaths being attributed to Duterte. Then, there is the matter of red tape and corruption which the survey says remain manageable. Again, the public seems to agree with his brusque style and public dismissals—another point in his favor.
On many occasions, his continuous dismissal of laggards, presumably corrupt and traveling officials while haranguing his audiences with tips on dealing with corrupt government officials with his trademark “sampalin niyo”(slap them) for even just a whiff of extortion has apparently had a chilling effect within the bureaucracy. Which adds up to his positive public standing.
Even the Chief Executive’s handling of the economy has been met with approval among analysts and financial institutions. While the expected lifting of a substantial number of the poorest of the poor has yet to materialize, the anti-Duterte groups cannot deny that indeed there have been marked improvements in many sectors of the economy.
For one, revenue collection especially in the two most critical agencies, Customs and BIR, has increased dramatically since Duterte assumed office. For the first time since the 1980s, the Bureau of Customs has met its collection targets. On the other hand, the BIR has been able to increase its collection efficiency and doubled its disposal of cases, many of which have been languishing in limbo for years.
Our sources say that this delaying tactic (codenamed parking practice by lawyers and BIR insiders) has been netting BIR scalawags hundreds of millions if not billions of pesos for years. One remembers that during PNoy’s time a shameless campaign similar to that of the late Tanauan City Mayor Antonio Halili was launched by then-BIR commissioner Kim Henares.
At first, the public welcomed such a move as a means to keep the public informed and for the tax evaders to finally turn on a new leaf. They soon found out though that the delays and shameless campaigns were only for show as a lot of the cases filed were parked at the DoJ for preliminary investigation. The quid pro quo was for the BIR and DoJ to keep the same parked while the unscrupulous inside operators and their bosses collected “parking fees.”
In addition to the increase in collection efficiency in the short period that President Duterte has been in office, his centerpiece Build, Build, Build program has spurred economic activity to new highs. Construction has been on a roll, direct investments in manufacturing and services not just in the stock market have been pouring in, and tourist arrivals have been spiking.
Despite the continuing efforts of anti-Duterte groups to pour cold water on the economy’s strides, the public appears to be more tolerant of the administration than the critics had expected. The Duterte administration must be doing something good and the public approves of it, warts and all.