NEWSFLASH
MANILANS AGAINST ERAP'S RESIGNATION -- SURVEY
Manila, Nov. 21, 2000- Two out of three Metro Manilans want President Estrada to remain in office, believing that the constitutional process must be allowed to take its course with regard to the jueteng-related charges against him, according to a latest survey by a private pollster.
Pulse Asia’s Nov. 7 survey in Metro Manila showed that 69 percent of the respondents want Mr. Estrada to stay on as President while 46 percent rejected outright clamor for the Chief Executive to resign ahead of the Senate trial on the impeachment case against him.
Sixty-nine percent also support the constitutional process to address this leadership issue as they agreed with the statement in the opinion poll that “as long as there is an impeachment filed against the President, the whole process should be finished whether the result favors him or goes against him,” Pulse Asia’s survey showed.
It said that 92 percent of the poll respondents said they have either read or heard about the anti-Estrada rally at the EDSA Shrine last Nov. 4, but half of them (49 percent) said it had no effect on their view of the Estrada administration.
Seventeen percent of those who have read or heard about the Nov. 4 rally against Mr. Estrada even said that the event has made them “supportive of his administration” because they have, as a result, developed a “positive or more positive” view of his government.
The results of Pulse Asia’s latest poll bolstered findings of its previous survey, conducted on Oct. 13, which bared that 53 percent of respondents want Mr. Estrada to stay put as President.
Pulse Asia’s survey likewise supported the findings of a survey conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS) that “a plurality of Filipinos don’t want Mr. Estrada to resign amid charges of jueteng payola and tobacco tax kickbacks that had been flung at him by Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson of Ilocos Sur.”
In its Oct. 26 to 30 nationwide survey, 44 percent of SWS’ respondents opposed the President’s resignation (as against 29 percent who wanted him to resign), while a far bigger number rejected his removal from office through any extra-constitutional means.
Sixty-six percent of the respondents to the SWS poll last month opposed the removal of Mr. Estrada through a “people power” revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 while a higher 85 percent rejected his ouster via a military coup.
Fifty-nine percent also opposed the holding of a “snap” poll similar to the one held in 1986 that pitted Ferdinand Marcos against Corazon Aquino, the widow of murdered Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. In the item in Pulse Asia’s Nov. 7 survey on the “most preferred presidential action in the country’s best interest,” only 30 percent of its respondents in Metro Manila favored Mr. Estrada’s resignation.
A total of 69 percent of respondents wanted him to stay put as Chief Executive.
Mr. Estrada has implemented an array of broad reforms since he promised to do so in a television and radio message aired last Oct. 30.
Over the past two weeks, he has issued executive orders prohibiting his close relatives and friends from engaging in business transactions with government agencies and financial institutions, unfreezing P50-billion worth of sequestered San Miguel Corp. (SMC) for use by the ailing coconut industry, and creating a P1-billion relief program for coconut farmers.
Mr. Estrada has also issued executive orders fine-tuning the port modernization program, reorganizing the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), awarding telecommunications franchises only through public bidding, and strengthening the food security program by returning the control over the National Food Authority to the Department of Agriculture.
Moreover, the President has ordered the closure of private duty-free shops in Cebu and Davao cities as well as the jai alai fronton in Manila’s Malate district, and the speedy implementation of a progressive air liberalization program by pushing an “Open Skies” policy on a country-by-country basis.
He has also directed a top-level panel headed by Justice Secretary Artemio Tuquero to draw up on or before yearend a new government policy on gambling.
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