Dump politics, serve the people

Dump politics, serve the people | Daily Tribune

The way things are going for the current Malacañang occupant, perhaps he should start considering, at this juncture, contracting the services of a savvy, seasoned professional crisis PR expert.

For one thing, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s performance/trust rating, according to surveys conducted by public opinion polling firm Pulse Asia, has been in a double-digit slump since Q4 last year.

A survey released early last month showed his performance rating dropping 13 percent, from 68 percent in December last year to 55 percent in Pulse Asia’s March 6-10 poll nationwide. The number of survey respondents who gave his performance a thumbs down increased by 11 points, from nine percent to 20 percent.

The President’s trust rating was even more dismal, falling 16 points from 73 percent in December 2023 to 57 percent in March this year.

Meanwhile, the number of poll respondents indicating no trust in him rose from seven percent to 15 percent.

Trust and approval ratings for the President declined across all areas, with the lowest indicated in Vice President Sara Duterte’s bailiwick, Mindanao, at 38 percent, from 70 percent. The Visayas followed with 54 percent from 73 percent; Metro Manila with 55 percent from 76 percent; and the rest of Luzon, from 72 down to 67 percent.

If those ratings aren’t worrisome enough for the President, here comes now the devastation of the nation’s agricultural areas by El Niño, prompting both the Climate Crisis Coordinator for El Niño/La Niña Response, UN Assistant Secretary-General Reena Ghelani, and UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in the Philippines Gustavo Gonzalez to appeal for the global community to increase their support for the Philippines which is currently experiencing a “serious drought.”

The current El Niño episode is one of the strongest in the country’s history. It has dried up some 77,731 hectares of agricultural lands and put over 85,000 farmers and fishermen in 11 regions in dire straits. So far, damage to Philippine agriculture is estimated at a staggering P5.9 billion.

To even further dim things, there too is this month’s release of the Social Weather Stations March 21-25 survey results, which indicate that more Filipinos have been experiencing hunger involuntarily, that is, being hungry and not having anything to eat at least once during the first quarter of this year — the highest number since the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2021.

The private pollster’s survey showed that 14.2 percent of Filipino families suffered hunger or had nothing to eat at least once in the past three months, surpassing the previous quarter’s 12.6 percent hunger incidence. This is the highest hunger incidence since May 2021, when SWS recorded 16.8 percent.

The survey results, based on face-to-face interviews with 1,500 adults nationwide, showed that 19 percent of Metro Manila families said they experienced involuntary hunger — the highest in the country — followed by Luzon outside Metro Manila at 15.3 percent, the Visayas at 15 percent, and Mindanao at 8.7 percent.

These — the devastating impact on agriculture of the extreme extended drought, the rising incidence of hunger among the people, and the unceasing decline in his ratings, particularly in Mindanao, following his public word war with his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, and the latter’s public opposition to the administration’s push for Charter change — are issues the President cannot afford to leave unresolved.

He cannot ignore the people’s apparent discontent, which threatens, among many other critical matters, his efforts to evolve a legacy apart from the tarnished one left by his father and namesake.

Perhaps at no time has there been a need to put politics aside, to solidify his relations with his government partners, starting with his Vice President, to together lead the government in tackling head-on the humongous challenges plaguing the nation — and serve, genuinely serve, the people.

Beyond his dreams of restoring his family’s faded glory, it is his performance, the people’s trust, his dependability, and his effectiveness and survival as the leader of this country that matters the most and are seriously at stake here.