Popularity grating

The question is, where do we go from here?

It was clear that, playing the sloganeering game about the straight and narrow, the Aquino (Part II) administration squandered the first three years of the six-year term of our leader Benigno Simeon (aka BS) carping about the corruption of the previous cute administration of Gloriaetta.

But it now seems that, with the pork barrel scandal grating at his popularity rating which just took a wild violent dive, our leader, aka BS, perhaps sees a need to spend the next three years of his term defending his own administration in the intensifying pork barrel scandal.

Well, the scandal will not just go away, despite the smokescreen called the Zamboanga uprising and the devastation from the earthquake in Bohol and Cebu, not to mention the pending IRP (increased rotational presence) agreement, which is actually a military arrangement between the Philippines and the United States.

As we reported last Monday, our leader BS continued to go on the media offensive in the controversial DAP, the so-called disbursement acceleration program.

The administration of course intended to use the budget “savings” to pump-prime the sluggish economy on its first year. It nevertheless became an opening for the administration to use part of the billions in the DAP as just another pork barrel for senators and congressmen.

Our leader BS had himself invited to the meeting of this little known media group called Focap (Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines) to claim the existence of a grand conspiracy between politicos and media against him regarding the DAP.

Last week, to the surprise of many in mainstream media, he went on nationwide television supposedly to explain directly to his “bosses” his side of the controversial DAP.

Immediately, our contacts in business asked how come our leader BS had to do the explaining himself, despite the battalion of presidential spokespersons in Malacañang, who have already spent oodles of saliva in the past couple of months to extricate our leader BS from the controversies surrounding the DAP.

From what I gathered, our leader BS personally decided to do the media offensive on the DAP issue himself, confident about his credibility before the public, in which the presidential spokespersons were obviously deficient.

It is true that, after the public outrage over the DAP and PDAF (priority development assistance fund), the Palace boys of our leader BS indulged us with nothing but motherhood statements.

But really now, what is the ultimate goal of the media offensive of our leader BS, who appeared live and in person, focusing his attention on the issue at the expense of other important state matters, such as those long-delayed infrastructure projects?

If we are lucky, the administration will consider the media offensive a success as soon as the popularity rating of our leader BS shows even just a slight increase. The administration will have been successful in arresting the downslide of his popularity.

But a big problem arises, at least according to our contacts in business, if our leader BS makes his personal media offensive into another distinct separate career, on top of leading this country and managing the government, aiming to regain—if not surpass—his all-time high rating in the past.

The thing is that, under the Constitution, the President of this republic only has one term, unless of course our leader BS wants to extend his term,

Still, all those popularity ratings and the trust ratings—and whatever other psychological things that public opinion polls seek to measure—can only serve to (1) massage his ego and (2) boost the chances of whoever he chooses to bless and support as his successor.

We all know who among the stalwarts in the Liberal Party of our leader BS is dying to be the “one,” the direct beneficiary of the high popularity rating of our leader BS come presidential election time in 2016.

If you ask anybody in business trying to close some big projects with the government, the campaign season for the next elections already started right after the midterm elections last May.

No wonder, many top government officials already try to avoid making big decisions for fear of possible backlash coming from the next administration.

Even with only less than three years remaining in the term of our leader BS, it is indeed a wonder that he has yet to fire anybody in his administration. It is not as if all the Cabinet members, plus their undersecretaries and assistant secretaries, have been saints all this time. Well, the foolishness in the PDAF also happened in the past three years of the Aquino (Part II) administration.

Nobody has been held accountable.

But let us even assume that all the chosen people of our leader BS walked the straight and narrow path in the past three years. Since our leader BS never fired anyone of them, it only tells us that by not firing any political appointee of our leader BS, he considers their performance as incredibly good.

Surveys in the past three years already showed that such was the case. Where do we go from here? Perhaps it is time to take another survey.