Palace pooh-poohs VP Sara’s ‘performance’

By Herbert Vego

DURING a press briefing, Malacañang Press Officer Claire Castro expressed disbelief over the recently-published Second Quarter 2026 Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey “awarding” Vice President Sara Duterte “58 percent of respondents satisfied with her performance.”

As simultaneously published in all national broadsheets, only 26 percent were dissatisfied.

The same survey showed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. lagging behind with only 38 percent of Filipinos satisfied and 45 percent dissatisfied.

What? A greater 58 percent of respondents are satisfied with Inday Sara’s performance and only 38 percent with Bongbong’s?

Ate Claire must have head-ached over those figures which she could not fathom.

She said that survey numbers are not a measure of success and should not be used to manipulate public perception.

“Dahil kahit ano pong maging numero diyan, ang Pangulo ang siyang nagtatrabaho at ang ilan ay nagbabakasyon lamang,” she remarked.

She expressed hope that the “non-commissioned” survey would not muddle the truth about “who is really working and who is not.”

“Non-commissioned” means that SWS did it without any individual or group sponsors.  Can we believe that?

At a time when millions of people worldwide were paying attention to the televised impeachment trial of VP Sara in the Senate/Impeachment Court, the survey seemed to indicate public disbelief in her accountability over assassination threats against President Marcos, the First Lady and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.

One of the video clips shown during the trial was of a furious vice-president stressing, “May kinausap na ako na tao. Sinabi ko sa kanya, ‘Kapag pinatay ako, patayin mo si BBM, si Liza Araneta, at si Martin Romualdez.’ No joke, no joke. Nagbilin na ako.”

We can only scratch our heads, not knowing how the travel-weary vice-president could have outperformed a working President.

Common sense tells us that the survey would not have merited front-page exposure unless published as an “advertorial” or a paid ad disguised as news.

Since VP Sara has announced her plan to run for President in 2028 – unless convicted in the ongoing impeachment trial — she badly needs “promotion”.

Political surveys have an average of 1,200 respondents.  So. how could they feel the pulse of more than 60 million Filipino voters nationwide?

If we submit the same questionnaire to another set of 1,200 respondents, would we get the same result?

See?  They announce results on a “percentage” basis to hide the actual number of respondents.

Learning from past elections, when survey frontliners eventually win, the surveyors claim, “We told you so.”

The collaborative stance of the media and pollsters, unfortunately, mirrors Goebbels’ idea that “a lie repeated often becomes truth.”

Paul Joseph Goebbels, by the way, was the chief propagandist responsible for fooling the German people with a favorable image of Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler in 1933 until the latter’s suicide in 1945.

Let’s not allow ourselves to be fooled, too.

Let us recall the pre-election surveys for the midterm senatorial election in 2025.  In none of those surveys did senatorial candidates Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan make it to the “magic 12”.  However, these two placed 2nd and 5th, respectively, in the actual race.

Ben Tulfo, who placed 5th in most surveys, did not make it. Otherwise, he could have become the third Tulfo – in addition to his brothers Raffy and Erwin — in the present Senate.

-oOo-

ON MORE POWER MODERNIZATION

LAST week, I briefly mentioned about the emphasis given by MORE Electric and Power Corp. to grid modernization through energization of unmanned power substations.

It means that the city’s distribution utility has shifted toward a more digital and automated “smart” grid, designed to keep pace with the city’s rising energy demand amid expanding economic activity.

To be more specific, its supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) can monitor and operate substations entirely from a remote-control center. This enables real-time oversight and more efficient grid management.

This technology boosts grid reliability by allowing automated fault detection that can swiftly isolate issues and restore power within seconds.

The SCADA framework provides a “digital brain” for the grid, enabling predictive maintenance and data-driven forecasting to prevent overloads.