Approved

If there is indeed a conspiracy to oust President Rodrigo Duterte, the latest trust and approval surveys should be reasons for pause.

Pulse Asia’s year-end survey confirms the numbers SWS released earlier. Six months in office, Duterte’s trust and approval ratings remain in the excellent range.

It is significant to note that the latest numbers draw from surveys conducted after two polarizing events: the burial of former president Ferdinand E. Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani and Vice President Leni Robredo’s decision to leave the Duterte Cabinet. These two polarizing events are on top of growing alarm over the killings associated with the war against drugs and the uncertainty created by the President’s views on our foreign relations.

Both surveys do show a slight decline in the President’s ratings. The decline is almost statistically insignificant – especially when set against the substantial decline in the trust and approval ratings of other senior officials, the Vice President most notably.

Some might wonder: What has Duterte done to deserve such high ratings?

That is not an easy question to answer. Over the past six months, Duterte was almost a single-issue president. He was obsessed with the anti-drugs campaign. He talked about it repeatedly and endlessly. He sometimes makes it sound like this was all that mattered for national redemption.

Perhaps it is, for many. As the campaign to dismantle the “apparatus” of illegal drugs wore on, taking its bloody toll, the streets do seem safer these days. The volume of crime – except for murder and homicide – dropped dramatically. The need to fund addiction, it is now clear, drove up the incidence of other crimes.

The trust ratings are easier to explain. His meandering speeches and incomplete sentences, liberally sprinkled with expletives, actually charm audiences. He comes across as a simple and uncomplicated man doing his best for the country he loves. He is understood as the man on horseback the nation needs at this time: decisive, unrestrained and uncontainable.

He is one of us, people seem to think of Duterte. He is not indebted to the oligarchs. He is not bound to the politicians. He has no other ambition but to serve. He even looks like us.

With over 90% trust and approval ratings, Mindanao is clearly Duterte’s bailiwick. The people in the nation’s second-biggest island simply love the man, the first from the island to become president. Oust Duterte and Mindanao secedes.

Metro Manila, often the most critical constituency, is Duterte’s second most solid base of support. The congested, crime-infested metropolitan region yearns for a strong hand to set things right, make things safe and produce relief from all the miseries associated with unplanned urbanization.

More than anywhere else, the people of Metro Manila want a police force they can depend on. Duterte and his charismatic police chief appear to be delivering that.

All the past episodes of protest and insurrection were centered in the metropolitan region. From the emails found in what is now called the “Leni-leaks,” it is clear those who want to oust Duterte remain trapped in the old paradigm of massive, city-based political mobilization.

That paradigm would no longer work. We saw that in the anti-burial protests that were, it is now clear, orchestrated by the “Yellows.” Those protests attracted only a paltry and could not be sustained.

There is nothing yet on the horizon capable of exciting or inciting the critical mass capable of altering the status quo. There are no credible anti-Duterte personalities to rally around. The personalities unmasked in the “Leni-leaks” emails should sit back and rethink their political project.

Ethanol

It turns out we are now importing a lot of ethanol so that the fuel companies may comply with the law requiring 10% of fuel sold contain the substance. The importation happens because, at present prices, local producers find it more lucrative to sell sugar rather than extract ethanol from cane.

Sugar producers lobbied for the use of ethanol as fuel additive when they could not sell their stocks. It was a means to save our dying sugar industry. Rather than reconfigure our inefficient sugar plantations, we chose to pass a law requiring consumers to accept fuel with ethanol added.

Ethanol is more expensive than the basic hydrocarbons at the present price regime. That kept fuel prices high for the end-users. Since we now import the substance, the added costs are much higher.

Worse, unscrupulous oil distributors have resorted to adding other substances to skirt around the ethanol content requirement. The other substances damage engines, pollute the environment and damage health.

The ethanol content requirement is yet another one of those pieces of legislation passed to protect vested interests at the expense of consumer welfare. It is a requirement thinly disguised as an ecological measure even as greed was at its core.

Energy Secretary Al Cusi is now asking Congress to either repeal the ethanol content law or allow more flexible additive content. What was a means to reduce our oil imports has now become the cause for more expensive importation of additives. The requirement is merely draining our foreign reserves without contributing to fuel efficiency.

While at it we might as well review other pieces of legislation that merely pass on costs to consumers and guarantee profit to vested interests. The feed-in-tariff scheme designed to safeguard the interests of big investors in “renewable energy” while penalizing electricity users with higher costs comes to mind.

The time has come to have a pro-consumer Congress. That institution has been vulnerable to vested interests in the past.