Filipino bags top opinion poll award

The world’s highest award in public opinion research has gone to Dr. Mahar Mangahas, president of the Social Weather Stations, for his role "in championing the rights and freedoms of survey researchers in the Philippines."

World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) awarded the Helen Dinerman Prize to Mangahas at its annual conference held last week in Rome, Italy.

The Dinerman Prize is WAPOR’s highest award and is specified for career contributions to innovative research and to research methodology. It went to a non-Westerner for the first time since 1981, when the annual award was created in honor of the late Helen Dinerman, a pioneering promoter of international research on public opinion.

Philippine Ambassador Philip Lhuiller represented the country in the awarding ceremony.

The WAPOR award recognized the persistence of Mangahas, a columnist of the Manila Standard, in promoting freedom in survey research, which most recently led to a favorable court ruling on a SWS-Standard petition to declare unconstitutional a section of the Fair Election Practices Act.

A section of the said Act had banned the publication of election surveys in the last 15 days before the national election or seven days before a local election.

The Supreme Court responded quickly to the April 11 petition by issuing a decision on May 5, nine days before the 2001 senatorial elections and in time for the SWS final per-election survey published in the newspaper on May 11. This survey discovered that former First Lady Loi Estrada was likely to win on account of a vote of sympathy for her though not for the opposition Puwersa ng Masa coalition as a whole, thus maintaining SWS’ projected score of 8-5 in favor of the administration party. Both projections proved to be correct.

WAPOR was also impressed by the High Court’s move in 1998 to restrain the Commission on Elections from interfering with the exit polling of the SWS for television network ABS-CBN. The SC made permanent the restraint in a January 2000 decision.

Despite recent court rulings in the Philippines and other countries that election surveys and exit polls are covered by freedom of speech, bans on surveys persist with a few countries considering new legislation to impose even more restrictions.

WAPOR has consistently opposed such restrictions as offensive to principles of freedom and democracy.