It is anomalous, irregular, if not downright criminal, for a privately funded poll survey like the Social Weather Stations to make public that 66 percent of the Filipino voters agree to that highly questionable ruling of the Supreme Court. First, the operators of SWS should bear in mind that the issue now centers on whether the majority of the justices who voted to allow Poe to run was valid. Second, that the poll survey, as a matter of decency, ethics and respect to our judicial institution, should have refrained from conducting that kind of mockery as if to put pressure on those justices who voted to disqualify Poe by alleging that the so-called majority of the Filipino voters favor that she run for the office.
While ordinary Filipinos are not in a position to analyze why a person who renounced her citizenship and returned to claim allegiance because she is interested in becoming president, the fact is clear that the SWS is putting pressure on those justices to change their mind because public clamor demand that she be allowed to run as if the office is waiting for her. There is in this sinister move by SWS to pull the issue out of the legal parameter which is fraudulent because it supplants the legal issue with irrational and emotional process which they purport as a “democratic choice,” and that our laws including the Constitution must bend according to the wishes of the people.
While SWS can claim that its survey speaks of the truth, there is no such thing as truth until the happening of that event occurs. The truth must be made as a fact, and there are moral and legal limitations like the premature announcement of a decision in a litigated case or in conditioning the minds of the people in the name of freedom and democracy that one candidate is likely to win. Any attempt to pre-empt the truth is to create a mental conditioning. There is deceit because it renders their hooted democratic process a sham. It is like telling those justices to vote for Poe’s qualification; otherwise, they would be disobeying the will of the alleged 66 percent Filipino voters who want her to run.
In fact, SWS is lying between its teeth much that there is a whale of difference between not being allowed to run and from being disqualified to run. Poe is not being prohibited from running, but is disqualified to run, which means that it is the law that is prohibiting her, not those justices or the people. In fact, SWS went beyond by conditioning the minds of the people that Poe is going to win, and are holding to their propaganda they call “survey” as their evidence to dupe the people. In which case, SWS is maliciously changing the issue from a purely legal to one of alleged public clamor which is fraudulent.
By relying on its self-serving claim that 66 percent of the Filipino voters favor the candidacy of Poe, SWS has now placed the sword of Damocles above the head of those justices whose duty is simply to uphold the law no matter how unpopular the result may be. In fact, discussing a pending case publicly case amounts to blackmail because it prevents those justices from deciding the case, which could be the subject of contempt of court. There is no reason why this self-styled survey outlet had to bring the matter to the people much that we have an institution where legal issues are supposed to be ventilated.
In fact, when the shoddy survey was announced, it came out on the same day when the legal experts, made up of the law deans from the various law schools, denounced the mysterious ruling of the alleged majority of the justices. The so-called 66 percent touted by SWS cannot be more knowledgeable than the legal luminaries. The survey is laden with malice for obviously, it was meant to throw a monkey wrench at those justices who voted to disqualify Poe, as if the vote of the seven justices is valid and binding.
In countries that know the mechanics of a real democracy, the practice of SWS or as some cynics would call it, Survey na Walang Saysay, constitutes a criminal act because the survey is irrelevant to people who have been entrusted to interpret the law. We would not even venture out to question the veracity of that survey but of the unethical and disrespectful manner they plug in their candidate. People who have less interest in politics and likely to be persuaded by the claim of SWS that one candidate is popular or is likely to win would now be tempted to follow the fraudulent bandwagon laid down by SWS.
That trending, which in fact is a form of cheating, makes a mockery of our democratic institution by depriving the ordinary voters of their independent and intelligent judgment. In fact, it is a form of electioneering because the claim that 66 percent of the Filipino voters agreed to the decision of the Supreme Court is a judgment that Poe is just about to be declared the winner. There is no reason nor logic for SWS why more than 50 percent of the voters have already decided for Poe, and that the court should allow her to run, for otherwise, it would be depriving the majority of our people of their choice, which is wrong.
In other words, we have gotten for ourselves a fraudulent manipulator of our fate who has assumed the role of a molder of public opinion, who discredits the law, and makes a mockery of our democratic choice to select candidates under the mischievous pretext that they are likely to win. The is no reason why the SWS and other poll surveys would come out every now and then with a preposterous survey indicating that this presidential and vice presidential candidate are topping the survey, and surprisingly many are amazed, for often they defy logic.
This column hastens to say this because this good-for-nothing administration that hypocritically calls itself tuwid na daan is so unpopular, yet illogically, the survey reveals that their candidates or at least candidates suspected to be supported and funded by them are the ones who are leading.
The people need not even verify their claim. All they need is to examine the logic behind the result. This is the same pattern that has evolved from the old and discredited CIA-funded front that style itself as the National Movement for Free Election or Namfrel. The difference is while the old election watchdog purports to safeguard and count the votes in the name of democracy, poll survey tells the people to vote for candidates likely to win to avoid wasting their ballots, and somebody would do the rest to make good their prediction. The mere fact that they accept jobs from candidates to conduct survey on how they are faring in their campaign sortie is an indication they have never been independent as they claim to be.