Pollsters and tailor-made surveys

Last week Pulse Asia Inc. came up with a survey on the perception of Filipinos, which revealed that 45 percent of Filipinos found President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) as the most corrupt president. With all those scams swirling around her, one would think that this survey may very well be correct, except that it was apparently done (or paid) at the instance of former Sen. Sergio Osmeña III from Cebu. For me, that information was more than enough to put a doubt on what Pulse Asia has been doing.

Therefore any Tom, Dick and Harry with a political agenda can ask Pulse Asia to do a survey and God knows how those results could be “tailor-made” to suit the political whims of those who paid for the survey. If you ask me, Pulse Asia just shot themselves on the foot! They should have never allowed themselves to be used by politicians, regardless of how noble their objective is… because this has now put a black cloud of doubt over Pulse Asia.

In a similar vein, ABS-CBN has filed a P63-million civil case against the media research agency AGB Nielsen over its “alleged systematic organized and well-funded attempt” to rig television ratings. In this nation where corruption can be found everywhere (yes, I submit even with us in the media) I wasn’t a bit surprised by this suit by ABS-CBN. How can we tell that their poll or survey was done by paying the people who they surveyed? This was an old practice I knew decades ago when radio stations competing with each other would pay people in cash or in kind to listen to their programs.

Perhaps it is time for survey or research companies to do their own survey and find out what the Filipino people think about their surveys and they might be surprised to know that a great number of Filipinos believe that those surveys can be biased to suit their customers’ agenda, regardless of whether those clients are private companies or politicians.

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Finally after a very long wait, the Office of the Ombudsman in the Visayas has found prima facie evidence against Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza and 18 other government officials who were involved in a highly anomalous P23.4-million computer scam. We have been harping on this issue in many columns, especially after Efrain Pelaez Jr., president of the Mactan Island Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc., gave the Ombudsman the necessary paper trail that clearly showed that this purchase of computers for the city schools was highly irregular.

Also charged with Mayor Radaza et al were his city attorney, Vincent Joseph Lim, and a Jennet Serna Uy, representative of the PC supplier Kein Enterprises. As we said before, the P23,476,500 that the City of Lapu-Lapu spent for 470 computers would amount to P50,000 per computer. What makes this purchase highly irregular is that we saw from the posted ads in the premises of Kein Enterprises that their Pentium IV powered PCs were being sold for only P17,500 with a free table and chair included. This is a far cry from the P50,000 that the City of Lapu-Lapu paid for those PCs.

As we said, one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this is corruption staring in our faces. This is why we asked the Ombudsman why it took them so long to decide that there was indeed prima facie evidence to charge Mayor Radaza et al for this illegal transaction. But the wheels of justice have finally began to move… so we ask this very pertinent question… why shouldn’t the Ombudsman suspend Mayor Radaza because he has gone to extreme lengths to harass Efrain Pelaez?

This brings us to the next legal problem that Mayor Radaza is facing – a criminal charge filed in the Office of the Ombudsman against his pals in the City of Lapu-Lapu, notably city attorney Joseph Vincent Lim and city administrator Teodoro Ybañez, for the illegal demolition of a causeway built by Pelaez. We have always viewed this super quick action on the part of these officials as “harassment” by the city mayor. This causeway has an environmental compliance certificate from the DENR, while many areas similarly situated only have mayor’s permits but no ECCs.

Lastly, another investigation is in the offing when the 470 computers that were allegedly purchased at overpriced cost were found to have pirated or unlicensed software by Microsoft Philippines. We would have expected that at P50,000 a pop, those computers would have carried legitimate Microsoft software. With this string of graft cases filed against the Lapu-Lapu City mayor, the next step by the Office of the Ombudsman is to have him suspended and put him on the watch list. So now the vigil for this next legal event starts this week. Let’s hope that the wheels of justice will be faster now.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.